Why the modern environmental movement must abandon its traditional left-right rubric

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Blair

On the event of Earth Day I spent some time thinking about the state of the environmental movement in Canada. As my regular readers know, I have written a lot of posts about the environmental movement including observations from a position on the sidelines of the Clayoquot battle (Modern Environmentalism: Trying to replicate the Clayoquot) through the years when I still believed that deep green and moderates could work hand-in-hand (Environmentalism and Pragmatism, the two aren’t mutually exclusive – A blast from my past) to a recognition that under the current political climate, pragmatists will never be accepted as equals by the deep greens (So Whatever Happened to the Environmental Moderates and Pragmatists?). I have also written about a reality that many of the deep greens simply do not understand: that their greenest desires are incompatible with a healthy ecosphere (Modern Environmental Fairy Tales: “Moving Back to the Land” and the 100 Mile Diet). That last post, while written well before its release, could basically be a chapter from An Ecomodernist Manifesto. As I discuss, we have to build a world where humans give nature an opportunity to thrive by densifying rather than the deep green’s preferred fairy-tale world where everyone goes back to living off the land. Having written on all these topics I want to address an issue that I think will decide the direction of the environmental movement for the foreseeable future. Everyone knows the Winston Churchill quotation: “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. Well I fear that the modern environmental movement, in a massive case of hubris, is in the process of repeating their greatest failure of the past: the mistaken belief that the environmental movement fits in the traditional left-right rubric of modern politics.

Ask any pollster and you will hear the same thing: in the public sphere, interest in the environment (as exemplified by climate change) peaked in the late oughts and has been diminishing ever since (ref). I detail my own crisis of faith in my post (On Appeals to Authority, “Climategate” and the Wizard of Oz: a Personal Journey from “Trust Me” to “Show Me“) and as indicated in the earlier referenced article, I am not alone. Now a simple affair like “Climategate” should not be enough to drive the public away from supporting action on such an important topic as climate change but the problem is that the environmental movement is repeating their errors of the 1980s and by the looks at the trends, they are about to suffer another decade in the desert like the cold years of the late 1990s early 2000’s. The young’uns amongst my readership will have forgotten that in the 1980s “Environment” was king. As I have discussed previously, I was a university student in the 1980’s and a student activist. In those days the environmental movement saw some of its biggest successes. The Montreal Protocol (1987) and the Acid Rain Treaty (initiated in 1988 and signed in 1991) were two big Canadian successes feeding into the high point for the Canadian green movement of the era: the rolling out of “The Green Plan” (ref). For my non-Canadian readers, the Green Plan was a plan by the government of the era to work forward on eight keys areas of environmental interest ranging from “clean air, water and land” to “sustaining our renewable resources”. The plan involved spending $3 billion over five years and allowed for the collection of baseline data on all sorts of environmental and ecological indicators. The understanding being that until you had baseline data on the environment you had no way of understanding your performance. The Green Plan helped fund my first job in the environmental industry and did so for any number of my friends. It was a high point for funding of the environment in Canadian political history. The funny thing about all those major events, including the Green Plan? They happened during Conservative governments. You see the environment is not a strictly left-right issue. Regardless of what you may have been led to believe, the environmental movement has many friends on the right side of the political spectrum. Heck, some of the most ardent conservationists out there are strict religionists who take pride in protecting and nurturing god’s creation.

So if “the environment” is not about left-right then what is it about? Well as I described in my previous post it is important to remember that in our history every surge in environmental awareness has occurred during times of strong economic performance. Look at the historical record and check out how environmental issues fall off the table during economic downturns. Look at how fast and how far the environment fell off the table following the crash of 1998. The lesson of history is that if you want to improve our environmental awareness and environmental performance you need a thriving economy. The current aim of the environmental movement, to stagnate our economy in the name of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, is thus guaranteed to backfire. In good times governments have the money to invest in research and the environment, in bad times those priorities can become sidelined. So if the environmental movement wants to help us work our way out of this dilemma, it needs to ensure that the average voter is not worrying about his/her next paycheck. In a global sense the environmental movement has to understand that hungry families care more about feeding their children than protecting the environment.

So let’s go back to the whole idea of the left-right thing. There is an old saw (proverb) that says: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. This proverb is categorically wrong. While the enemy of your enemy may be your friend, he/she may also be an enemy to you and your cause. As a modern example consider the opposition to Assad in Syria. At the start of the rebellion the moderate enemies of Assad followed the old proverb and what happened? Well the moderates turned their backs on their newfound “friends” (ISIL) only to get ambushed and murdered for their efforts. In the environmental world, environmentalists, as they gain political power, have historically aligned themselves with progressive and left-wing groups. The progressive groups make them feel welcome and often support their rallies and causes. The problem is that the progressives have their own agendas. They will support you if you help them advance their socio-political goals but get in their way and you are just spare baggage to be ejected as flotsam come the first sign of bad weather.

Many young British Columbian environmentalists wrongly think of the New Democratic Party (the NDP, our left wing major political party) as an ally. In doing so, they forget the lessons of our shared history. Clayoquot Sound happened under the Mike Harcourt (NDP) government. The Harcourt government, which was elected with the help of the environmental movement of the day, treated environmentalists more harshly than did the Social Credit before them or the Liberals after. The NDP government authorized the logging (to give union loggers work) that resulted in the protests to begin with; they then ordered the mass arrests in the Clayoquot and an NDP attorney general ensured that the arrestees were all brought to trial (in mass trials of all things) and were punished to the fullest extent of the law. It was under an NDP government that environmentalists were thrown in jail for protesting! Consider that as you get released on your own recognisance after a pipeline protest. Glen Clark’s (Glen Clark was another NDP Premiere) tenure saw the growth of the Green Party because under the Clark government, every time a progressive policy came in conflict with an environmental one, the progressive side won. Ujjal Dosanjh’s (the last NDP Premiere of BC) attempted rapprochement with the Greens came at the very end of his tenure, when it was clear he had no chance of winning another election. Only when he needed their help to try to get re-elected did he re-discover his green roots.

In a national sense the biggest advances for the environmental movement came not from Liberal governments (since the NDP never gets elected federally) but during the Conservative ones. The greenest Prime Minister in our history, ironically enough, was Brian Mulroney. Internationally, the Montreal Protocol would never have been passed without the strong support of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Heck Margaret Thatcher was the first major politician to develop policies to address climate change. Put simply, the way the modern environmental movement has aligned itself with progressives and anarchists has done nothing to build popular support for the movement. The government of the day is not going to make major changes unless at least a plurality of the voters are onside. When the average voter sees anarchists blocking roads and delaying their commutes, they don’t think, “I want to elect that guy to run my government”. So every pointless protest only builds momentum for people on the other side. As for getting the government’s ear, why would a Harper government do anything to help a movement that has declared its main goal as being to replace the Harper government? Realistically if the environmental movement can move away from its fascination with left-right politics then it can recognize that it has allies on the right side of the spectrum and enemies on the left. By stepping away from the partisan politics it can hoe its own row and drive its own agendas. By doing so it may discover that the currently impossible suddenly might become possible. Take a read at the following story to see where this train of thought goes. The corollary to this is: that if you go about making enemies of half the electorate then don’t expect their help once the election is over.

In the next 12 months there will federal elections in the UK, Canada and the US. In each case the environmental movement is betting its future on only one side in each election. This is the very same thing that the greens did in Australia several months ago and look how that turned out. As a betting man, I prefer to hedge my bets and so should the environmental movement; since history has shown that even when your preferred parties win, you cannot guarantee that the environment will be their deciding issue. Remember the lessons learned from the school of hard knocks: the environment is not a left-right issue and to treat it as such only guarantees its marginalization. If you alienate half the electorate you lose them as allies and as a corollary if you guarantee someone your support you guarantee that they can take you for granted.

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 7 Comments

On "An Ecomodernist Manifesto", Mannsplaining and irony blindness in climate science

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Blair

A very interesting document, An Ecomodernist Manifesto, came out this week. For those of you not familiar with the Manifesto, it represents an attempt by a number of pragmatic environmental scientists, economists and policy experts (http://www.ecomodernism.org/) to put the planet’s current ecological prospects into perspective and charts an alternative course to address some serious global problems. I would recommend that anyone interested in the field read the Manifesto. While I have a lot to say about the Manifesto (most, but not all, positive) that is not the point of this post. Rather my interest, in this post, is how activists have attacked the Manifesto. More specifically, this post is intended to address the irony blindness of some of the most militant “protectors” of the “consensus” on climate change.

As I have written before, my interest in this blog is to investigate evidence-based decision making. In the course of my writings I have written more than a few posts on the topic of climate change. Irrespective of the level of detail I have presented in my posts, or the amount of supporting documentation I have included, the most common and loudest complaints have been that “you have no role in this debate as you are not a climate scientist”. I have been informed, on more than one occasion, that the field of climate research is far too complicated for non-specialists to understand and that we mere mortals should stick to our knitting rather than comment on a field about which we “clearly lack any applicable expertise”.

To explain the whole irony blindness thing recognize that in the field of climate change there are some people who make tremendous use of social media; in that group one of the most prominent is Dr. Michael Mann. As many of you know, I was blocked by Dr. Mann on his Twitter feed for the temerity of asking him to stop conflating “lukewarmers” and “deniers”.

Apparently I am not the only person to have been blocked for the transgression of asking Dr. Mann a question, but given this condition I do not get to see all of Dr. Mann’s most recent tweets. However, before I was blocked I had the opportunity to read many hundreds of them and a sufficient number of his current tweets are re-tweeted to allow me to determine that his methods do not appear to have changed substantially in the last several months. One thing I have noticed is that Dr. Mann has a lot to say about people with whom he disagrees. Unlike many of his peers, more often than not his negative comments center around personalities and issues of policy rather than the underlying science of which he is an acknowledged expert. I cannot count the number of times he has used the word “denier” in a tweet and his opinions about people like Dr. Judith Curry and many of her peers are legendary. Besides the area of policy, where he might have some limited expertise, he also appears willing to expound on areas where his expertise would appear to be lacking. An example of this happened yesterday when Dr. Mann made the following tweet:

Now there is a pretty robust literature in the fields of Conservation Ecology and Environmental Econometrics and more than a few books have been written on the topics. Areas of research include the Environmental Kuznet Curve hypothesis, the IPAT identity (and its many sister/daughter variants) and many others. While I am certainly not an expert in those fields, my original training (prior to chemistry) was in population and conservation ecology and I have experience working in the field of ecosystem restoration. In my studies I was taught about a few simple premises that underlie human and societal development:

  • as societies become more affluent, their birth rates tend to decrease
  • as societies become more affluent, populations tend to become more urban as specialization and improved  technologies allow for a reduction in need for human labour in food production and increased per hectare crop yields
  • as societies become more affluent, their willingness to devote more resources for environmental protection increases as does their desires for improved environmental health outcomes.

I will not pretend to do this topic justice but I will point out that there is a very strong consensus in the field regarding these topics. Moreover, I am pretty sure that the authors of the Manifesto, who represent a pretty reasonable group of experts in the field, are more familiar with the intricacies of the academic literature in their fields than Dr. Mann. This is where the irony blindness comes in. As I discussed earlier, in the field of climate change non-specialists in the field are continually lectured about their lack of applicable academic credentials. However, as in the case above, these same individuals do not hesitate to step outside their areas of expertise to lecture us in fields in which they would appear to lack any applicable expertise.

In the last several years, a new term has entered the vernacular “Mansplaining”. Mansplaining has been defined as “explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman” (ref). Based on what I have observed in the field of climate change science I would like to propose a variation on this term: “Mannsplaining”. Mannsplaining can be used to describe situations where climate scientists, who brook no outside comment on their field, subsequently feel free to lecture other experts without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer about the field under discussion.

Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Politics, Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 13 Comments

Where the new Pembina Report misses the mark on Energy East

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Blair

Numerous people have sent me links to the Pembina Institute report: “Crafting an Effective Canadian Energy Strategy: “How Energy East and the oilsands affect climate and energy objectives”. Having quickly read the report I must admit to being a bit disappointed. My issues with this report are that, in my mind, it makes essentially the same mistakes that are made in the Council of Canadians report I deconstructed in my previous post “The Energy East Pipeline: Dispelling Some Myths” and by individuals on twitter as discussed at a subsequent post “On the economic and environmental folly of trying to “strangle the oil sands”.

As I discussed in my previous posts, I am strongly of the opinion that the absence of pipeline capacity is not going to be the tool needed to “strangle the oil sands”. In my opinion the only way to slow, or arrest, the growth of oil sands capacity is through some combination of government action (placing a sufficiently high price on carbon) and the market (reducing demand so that prices remain low enough to make new investment unprofitable). As I have written before, and will apparently need to repeat here, blocking Energy East does neither of these two things. All blocking the development of Energy East will do is to increase the amount of oil shipped by rail because given the current combination of oil prices; installed capacity; capacity under construction; and absence of carbon pricing, virtually all of the existing and most of the partially completed oil sands installations are still going to be completed. Given this reality, the output from those facilities is going to be transported to market by one means or another and in the absence of pipelines that load will be carried by rail. As I have pointed out more times than I care to mention on this blog, oil-by-rail is one of the riskiest, least environmentally sound, ways of getting that crude to market in a Canadian context.

So I have made some pretty definitive statements above and I suppose it is time for me to provide my supporting rationale. In my opinion, the linchpin of the Pembina report is the importance it places on the presence/absence of the Energy East pipeline on the future development of the oil sands. The money quotes from the report appear on pages 5-6 specifically:

“Pipeline capacity is a key determinant of oilsands growth, in addition to operating and capital cost increases and the market price for oilsands crude”.

and

Because of the Energy East pipeline’s proposed capacity of 1.1 mbpd [million barrels per day], it could play a significant role in determining how much and how fast the oilsands sector expands. Conversely, uncertainty about — or constraints on — the future availability of low-cost crude transportation acts as a brake on oilsands expansion, as current production has nearly reached the limit of existing pipeline capacity.

The problem with these quotations, and the supplementary assumptions that depend on these quotations, is that the data supporting the statements are entirely lacking. The reference for the first quotation is a report in Alberta Oil by Jeff Lewis (ref). Now I have read the Lewis article several times and I am afraid that for the life of me I cannot see the line they claim to be citing. Rather the Alberta Oil article points out the heavy competition that the Canadian oil sands face with respect to exports to the United States. While the article discusses the transportation of oil, the emphasis is on the risk to the expansion of pipelines network because American supply and its effect on Canadian oil prices. It makes no claim that pipeline capacity is a key but only suggests that capacity, including pipeline capacity, will be a limiting factor. This is an important qualifier as will be discussed later.

The second quotation feeds into an inset text box titled “Moving Crude by Rail”. This text box appears to be intended to provide the critical support for the entire premise of the section which, as noted above, provides the support for much of the later reasoning in the report. The problem with the text box is that it appears to misinterpret its source material: the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers report: “Crude Oil Forecasts, Markets & Transportation”. In the Pembina report they note that oil-by-rail was approximately 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) in late 2013. The Pembina Report appears to indicate that the CAPP report identifies a limit on rail capacity of 700,000 bpd in 2016 (500,000 bpd more than in 2003). But the problem is that the CAPP report (on page 32) clearly indicates that the 700,000 bpd limit is not contingent on limits in rail capacity but rather on a number of features including “the pace of pipeline capacity”. Rather, the CAPP report clearly indicates (in both the table and figure on page 32) that current oil-by-rail capacity is around 1 million bpd and is readily expandable to 1.4 million bpd. This 1.4 million bpd greatly exceeds the Energy East capacity of 1 .1 million bpd. The CAPP document also is limited in that it only describes the Canadian situation and does not include US oil by rail capacity.

As I have mentioned several times at this blog, at this very moment the US is expanding its oil-by-rail capacity immediately south of the border in order to transport over 800,000 bpd of Bakken Crude to the US West Coast. As I have written repeatedly, part of this upgrade is to supply the approximately 725,000 bpd needed by the existing US Puget Sound refineries now that their historical Alaskan supply is drying up. As we all know, the Bakken fields are slowly diminishing in production (ref). As their production diminishes this will open up that US oil-by-rail capacity (and the Puget Sound market) just as it is needed by the oil sands producers. So what does this all mean? Well the entire basis of the Pembina Report is that by stalling/Energy East it may be possible to strangle the oil sands, but as I have noted above, in the absence of Energy East the current and planned oil-by-rail capacity in Canada alone can more than replace the capacity provided by Energy East. Moreover, the built-up US capacity will be coming available just when it is needed by the oil sands producers for future developments.

So let’s go back to the original premise of this article. What will it take to slow the growth of the oil sands? Well one again I have to direct you to the article by Dr. Andrew Leach in Maclean’s. Given the money already invested, either in existing or projects with existing steel in the ground, these projects are going to go forward. Too much money has been invested to simply abandon these facilities and as described in the Maclean’s article most can continue to generate healthy profits even in the lower price oil markets of today. Given these facts, the only way to limit the growth of the oil sands is on the demand side. This has to be done by putting a price on carbon and providing cheaper alternatives to fossil fuels, because the only thing that can stop to the development of the oil sands is the combined might of government regulation and the market.

So to reiterate my original point, Energy East is not some magic key that can be used to slow the growth of the oil sands. Rather it represents the safest way to transport existing and already under development capacity to the Canadian market. As I have written more times than I care to count, with respect to potential risks to human and environmental health, getting crude oil out of trains and into pipelines is the safest way to go. Even from a greenhouse gas perspective, it uses less energy to transport oil by pipeline than it does by rail. So if you really care about the environment you will stop trying to use these types of harmful half-measures to slow the growth of the oil sands. I know fighting Energy East makes for great sound-bites and will no doubt bring in lots of donations to activist groups and keep lots of activists employed; but it will do nothing to slow the growth of the oil sands. Moreover if we force the future oil sands production out of pipelines and into trains it will result in more rail spills, more polluted watersheds and more potential deaths.

Posted in Canadian Politics, Energy East, Pipelines | 5 Comments

More on Oil Spills: Some Toxicological Calculations and What if it were Dilbit?

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Blair

I have been asked a number of questions, both on Twitter and via email, regarding my post on the English Bay fuel spill and so I have written up this follow-up to my last post. In particular, I was asked what the spill would mean from a toxicological standpoint and what would happen if the spill was dilbit rather than bunker fuel.

What Concentration of Fuel Oil will fish be exposed to?

From the toxicological perspective we need to consider a few factors. First and foremost, we all know that any birds or mammals that come in contact with the actual spill itself (get oil covered) will be affected. This is not new so I won’t say any more about that topic. Similarly, any sea life that ingests tar balls or gets covered in oil (like barnacles) will suffer. The question I have been asked most, however, reflects the Shell MSDS for marine oil that has been spread around the internet (ref). The MSDS reports the aquatic toxicity of marine oil as “Very toxic: LL/EL/IL50 < 1 mg/l (to aquatic organisms)” and the question I have been asked is: what will the spill mean to fish and marine life in the area?

The first thing to remember is that MSDSs are not toxicological documents and are intended to provide first responders etc… with very simple information. In this case, the MSDS clearly states “Information given is based on a knowledge of the components and the ecotoxicology of similar products.” If you want to actually know the toxicology of this material it is best to go to Health Canada documents or the US EPA Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) which the BC Ministry Environment considers the gold standard for risk assessment. The US EPA has a “Robust Summary of Information on Heavy Fuel Oils” (ref) that fills in any gaps you may have about fuel oil toxicology. According to the EPA, fish and crustaceans show effects at concentrations around 1000 mg/L, daphnia (marine plankton) were affected by concentrations of 100 mg/L and algae showed effects (reduced growth rate) down to the 1 mg/L range. With regards to humans, by toxicity standards the material is considered to have low human toxicity with the primary concern being inhalation of vapours containing hydrogen sulphide (from fresh material). That being said, low toxicity doesn’t mean it is good for you, just that it won’t kill you if you accidentally taste the material and thus, I would strongly advise against ingesting the stuff.

Knowing the target numbers to look for, I then did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to establish potential bunker fuel concentrations in English Bay. As described in my previous post, bunker fuel is hydrophobic and almost insoluble and most of the spill has been recovered so all these numbers I’m going to produce are massively conservative (will be much higher than the actual concentrations experienced) but for interest purposes let’s see what the maximum concentrations you could calculate for the spill. I understand as much as 3500 L of fuel escaped into the Outer Harbour. Using Google Earth I established that the Outer Harbour is sufficiently circular in shape that it can be approximated by a circle with an approximate radius of 3500 m. This makes the approximate area of the harbour 3.8 x 107m2. According to the Port of Vancouver, the approximate depth of the anchorage in the Outer Harbour is 14 m. To account for variations in depths, let’s assume that the average depth of the harbour is 10 m. That would make the volume of the harbour approximately 3.8 x 1011 L. As another measure of conservatism, let’s assume that the Outer Harbour represents a big bathtub with no currents bringing water in or out. Assuming all 3500 L mixed evenly in the Outer Harbour the approximate concentration would be 9.2 x 10-9 L/L. This represents a maximum concentration of 9.2 parts per billion. According to the EPA, above, the lowest acute toxicity result for marine toxicity is equivalent to approximately 1 mg/L (1 part per million). Thus, the resulting concentrations from the spill would represent approximately 1 thousand times (three orders of magnitude) lower than the dose that is reported to cause the algae to grow less quickly. [note I had a conversion error in an earlier version of this post which was identified by a sharp-eye reader]. So while the physical exposure to the liquid fuel would definitely have a deleterious effect, initial calculations provide a measure of confidence that a die-off of marine biota would not be expected from this spill since the conservative calculation shows numbers approximately one thousand lower than those that would be expected to effect the most sensitive species in the toxicological tests.

Addendum: a commenter asked what a change to 1 mm thickness would do to the concentration? The difference between 10 m and 1 mm is 4 orders of magnitude, so the resulting concentration would go from 1 million times lower to 100 times lower than those that would be expected to effect the most sensitive species in the toxicological tests.

What if it had been a Dilbit spill?

So the question I have heard the most is: what if were diluted bitumen (dilbit)? I had a lot of thoughts on what would happen having read many older reports on the subject, but rather than trusting my memory I sought out some newer information and after a bit of digging was rewarded when a colleague on twitter (H/T @natrlyst) directed me to an Environment Canada Technical Report on the topic (ref). I have spent several hours digesting its contents (I read this stuff so you don’t have to) and have discovered that much of what we previously believed would happen when dilbit is spilled in the marine environment may be wrong. The following is my précis of that document, with bonus information thrown in. For referencing purposes any physical data/observations should be considered to be derived from the Technical Report, although I will add some additional details.

Let’s start with the basics, what is dilbit? Dilbit consists of a mixture of 20% to 30% diluent and 70% to 80% bitumen. The bitumen is exactly what you think it is and the diluent is typically a naptha-based oil called “condensate”. For those of you who are campers, naptha is essentially the white gas you use in your Coleman lanterns and stoves. The condensate has a specific gravity in the 0.6 g/mL to 0.8 g/mL range and the resultant dilbit has density/specific gravity that ranges from around 0.92 g/mL to about 0.94 g/mL. So the quick answer to your question is that when spilled the dilbit will initially float. We all knew this was the case and up until recently the belief was that as the diluent evaporated away the resulting evaporated mass would sink. Well, apparently, that is not the case. Recent laboratory studies by Environment Canada show that even with a 26.5% evaporation rate (thus with pretty much all the diluent evaporated) the resultant evaporated dilbit would still retain a specific gravity (at 0oC) of 1.021 g/mL. For those of you with long memories you will remember that seawater density ranges from 1.025 g/mL to 1.033 g/mL at that temperature. Thus the material would not sink, as we were previously lead to believe, but would actually remain afloat. More interestingly, typically when lighter oils are hit with breaking waves they form small droplets that lack the buoyancy to float and will often remain entrained in the water column. The dilbit did not act in this way. Rather when the experimental dilbit was exposed to the wave pool, it formed much larger droplets which quickly resurfaced and coalesced into a surface slick. The Achilles heel of the dilbit, however, appears to be sediments in the water. As I mentioned in my previous post, oils exposed to water will preferentially adsorb to sediment particles and will eventually become heavy enough to sink as “tar balls”. When dilbit is exposed to fine to medium sized sediments it does just that and forms tar balls that have a tendency to sink into the water column. Interestingly enough, when the sediment was coarser (sandy grains) the dilbit would not form these tar balls and would instead remain afloat.

So to answer the original question: what if the spill had been a dilbit spill? Well the answer is very interesting because based on the literature, the result would have been very similar to what we saw with the fuel oil spill. Ironically, in the Environment Canada Technical Report they used IFO 180 (a fuel oil mix) as a comparison liquid in many of the experiments and typically it acted in a very similar way to the dilbit. So, believe it or not, the small spill of fuel oil in English Bay provides a very reasonable surrogate for what one would expect from a dilbit spill.

Doing the follow-up research for this piece really reminded me how important it is to keep abreast of the literature on topics such as dilbit spills. While decades of research and experience with oil spills allows us to know with reasonable certainty what will happen in the case of an oil spill, far less is known about the chemistry of a dilbit spill. My initial expectations were shattered as the literature I had on hand (which was only about 5 years old) made a lot of assumptions that have been overtaken by the most recent literature (the Environment Canada Technical Report). Based on this I look forward to seeing what further information is released when the next batch of research studies on dilbit spills hit the literature.

Posted in Chemistry and Toxicology, Oil Sands, Pipelines | 7 Comments

A non-specialist’s guide to how spilled hydrocarbons react in water

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Blair

After the spill today in English Bay (at the Port of Vancouver) I have been asked by numerous people to explain what happens when petroleum hydrocarbons spill into water. Anyone with an internet connection can get any number of descriptions of what happens when this occurs but the descriptions are typically either too simple to be useful or too technical for a non-specialist to understand. My aim in this post is to hit the sweet spot between those two extremes. While a grad student at UVic, I used to teach first year engineers their chemistry labs. The first year engineers were typically bright people, but few had more than grade 11 chemistry and they only took the course because it was a requirement. Teaching them was very helpful in my goal of understanding how to effectively communicate science. The goal of this post, therefore, will be to give a description that would pass muster with my engineering students. I am giving you this warning because my goal is not to be too technical, so if you are looking for a higher level description you will not find it here, moreover, some of the explanations may be imperfect as I am not going to dwell on the technical details that would bore the non-specialist reader. I will apologize that in order to understand the topic I will have to explain a few important terms/concepts.

So let’s start with a quick primer. You will notice in my introduction I did not use the words “oil”, “gasoline” or “bunker fuel”. The reason for this is that each one of those words represents a description for a specific type of mixture of petroleum hydrocarbons. In February, I wrote a post on gasoline prices that detailed the refining process (Why Cheap Oil Doesn’t Mean Cheap Gasoline or Diesel) and in that post I pointed out that petroleum hydrocarbons are made up of a mixture of individual hydrocarbon molecules. A hydrocarbon molecule is simply a molecule made up entirely of carbon and hydrogen atoms. Petroleum hydrocarbons can vary in type from small linear molecules (methane, ethane, propane, n-butane etc…) to cyclic and aromatic molecules like (cyclohexane and benzene) to huge monstrous unsaturated compounds (asphaltenes). Moreover not all crude oils are the same. They can vary from light crudes (Brent Light crude with a higher proportion of lighter molecules) all the way to heavy crudes and bitumen. The critical things to understand when trying to understand what happens when petroleum hydrocarbons spill in water are:

  • Petroleum hydrocarbon mixtures vary in their specific gravity but are mostly lighter than water.
  • Petroleum hydrocarbons are hydrophobic (they “fear” water).
  • Petroleum hydrocarbons are mixtures of compounds that have different volatility and solubility characteristics.

By understanding these three features you can typically understand what will happen when a petroleum hydrocarbon hits a water body.

Density and Specific Gravity

Everyone probably remembers the features of matter; that every substance has mass and occupies space. If you divide the mass by the volume of the space it occupies you get that object/substance’s density. When we are talking about liquids we use a term called “specific gravity”. Specific gravity simply means the density of a solution divided by the density of pure water at the same temperature (remember that liquids vary in density by temperature). Pure water, therefore, has a specific gravity of 1 gram per millilitre (g/mL). A liquid that has a specific gravity less than water will float on water while a liquid with a specific gravity greater than 1 g/mL will sink in water. As many of you will know seawater is denser than freshwater (it has an approximate specific gravity of 1.02 to 1.03 g/mL) so when freshwater and seawater meet (like at the mouth of the Fraser River) the freshwater will flow on the surface and the saltwater will be forced below the freshwater to form a saltwater intrusion wedge. Most petroleum hydrocarbons have specific densities lower than water, some are substantially lower: gasolines range from about 0.72 to 0.76 g/mL; diesels are in the 0.83 to 0.86 g/mL range, dillbit is around 0.94 g/mL and bunker oil is around 0.98 to 1.01 g/mL. So when gasoline spills on water it will typically float, but if bunker fuel spills into freshwater then it may float on, could mix with, and sometimes may even sink in water depending on the specific gravity of the water.

Hydrophobic Characteristics of Petroleum Hydrocarbons

Every kid has spent time playing with magnets and everyone knows that a fridge magnet has two poles, a positive and a negative. Water consists of H20 which also has poles with the oxygen end of the molecules being slightly negative and the two hydrogen molecules being slightly positive, thus water is called a polar solvent. In chemistry we talk about “like dissolving like” that is polar compounds will dissolve in polar solvents and non-polar compounds will dissolve in non-polar solvents. While water is polar, petroleum hydrocarbons are highly non-polar, that is they have no poles. Following the logic of “like dissolves like” in chemistry “unlike abhors and avoids unlike” so a non-polar compound will not dissolve in a polar solution. Moreover, not only does oil not dissolve in water, oil avoids water at all costs, in this it is called “hydrophobic” which literally means “afraid of water”. When oil comes in contact with water it will try to minimize its exposure to water. It does this by floating (if lighter than water and thus exposing itself along a single plane), forming spheres (if stuck in water with nowhere else to go by minimizing its surface area in the form of a sphere of pure liquid with water on the outside) or by adsorbing itself onto a suitable non-polar media (note I said adsorbing not absorbing). In the last case, the hydrocarbon attaches itself to the outside of the media (usually suspended sediments like grains of sand, silt or clay), that way only one side of the molecule is exposed to the water while the other side is attached to the non-polar soil/sediment.

Volatility and Solubility of Hydrocarbon mixtures

As I mentioned above, petroleum hydrocarbon formulations are made up of a mixture of compounds with different solubilities and volatility characteristics. If you are really interested in the actual breakdowns the “Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon (TPH) Criteria Working Group Volume 2: Composition of Petroleum Mixtures” will show you what is in each type of fuel. Gasolines are made up of compounds with typically between 5 and 13 carbons. When I wrote above that hydrocarbons are hydrophobic in a general sense all are slightly soluble. The reason for this is that water isn’t a perfect polar solvent and most hydrocarbons aren’t perfectly non-polar. Typically the smaller carbon constituents are more soluble than the bigger ones and so will mix “better” in water. The lighter components also tend to be more volatile, that is they will vapourize more quickly. The volatility has two features with respect to spills. The more volatile the compound the less time it will have to mix into the water. A gasoline spill at a gas station on a hot summer day could vapourize before it has time to mix with water, while a fuel oil in a cold climate may lose very little volume to vapourization. The volatilization will also change the characteristics of a fuel. Since the lighter components will vapourize at a faster rate than the heavier components, as a petroleum hydrocarbon ages its specific gravity increases. What this means is that a fuel that was lighter than water, when it spilled, could eventually become heavier than water as its lighter components vapourize, allowing it to eventually sink.

So what happens in a spill like the one in English Bay?

So let’s assume that the material that spilled in English Bay was a bunker fuel. Bunker fuel has a specific gravity approaching 1 g/mL and the seawater in English Bay should be around 1.03 g/mL. So the bunker fuel will initially float on the surface where it will be moved by the regional currents, tides and winds. As the fuel is mixed by winds and waves the lighter components will vapourize and some of the bunker fuel will mix into the water column where it will either seek out some surface upon which to adsorb (be it suspended sediments or seaweed) or lacking that will form the petroleum hydrocarbon spheres we call “tar balls”. Given more time, the fuel oil will sink where it will adsorb onto the sea-bottom sediments or lacking appropriate surfaces will stay in tar ball form and roll around on the surface. Given the nature of the material, it will eventually biodegrade but that is a long, slow process that is beyond the scope of this post. In the near term, much of the material will be recovered using the various specialized technologies designed with just this type of event in mind, some will escape to coat local sediments and will wash up on the beach and some will vapourize.

Blogger’s note: my apologies, in an earlier version of this post I had included incorrect units. Apparently late-night blogging does not enhance my proofing skills.

Posted in Chemistry and Toxicology, Oil Sands, Pipelines | 4 Comments

Starting a Dialogue – Can we really get to a "fossil fuel-free BC"?

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Blair

I have written a lot of posts in the last four months discussing and describing issues to consider in the fields of energy, renewable energy and pipelines. Based on the feedback, many of those posts have been viewed as being somewhat pro-industry. As I have described in my recent posts, I disagree with that implication and would argue that I am pragmatic environmentalist with a desire to advance good, evidence-based policies. One of the most frustrating roadblocks to developing good, evidence-based policies in BC is an absence of a reasonable set of baseline numbers that can serve as a foundation upon which to begin any discussion. Even my favourite touchstone website Energy BC fails when it comes down to actually providing the necessary numbers, in readily comparable units, that would allow non-specialists and specialists alike a common basis for addressing areas of agreement and disagreement. In my mind, the absence of these baseline numbers is one of the main reasons why I can’t have a simple discussion with the people from TankerFreeBC etc… It would also help to explain why I cannot accept the premises of many of their arguments.

The first step in any evidence-based decision making process involves getting the evidence/data out there so all parties in the discussion are starting from a level playing field. In the spirit of this I would like to lay out some general numbers that will help us start a dialogue and clarify the positions of the various parties in this discussion. The biggest area of confusion with regards to energy use in British Columbia lies in the fact that most of the actors on both sides of the debate are unaware of the actual energy needs of our province. There is an ongoing myth out there that most of BC energy needs are already being met via renewable energy sources (primarily hydro) and as such it should be relatively easy to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. As I will demonstrate below, this is a myth. While it is true that the majority of British Columbia’s electricity supply (almost 94% according to the BC Gov) is supplied via renewable energy sources this only represents a small percentage of the actual energy needs of British Columbia. To further explain I am going to have to define a few terms.

Petajoule (PJ): A petajoule is the standard unit of energy used in international energy discussions to allow for direct comparisons between energy sources. A petajoule is 1015joules and is enough energy to supply the yearly gas and electricity needs of 9000 BC households or gasoline to drive 7000 automobiles on BC roads for a year (ref).

Killowatt/hr (KWh), Megawatt/hr (MWh)and Gigawatt/hr (GWh): these measure the capacity to generate electrical energy. Household energy is measured in KWh (1000 watts); generating facilities are measured in MWh (1,000,000 watts) and energy is discussed in GWh (1 billion watts). Approximately 278 GWh are equivalent to 1 PJ. (ref)

Capacity: Capacity is a measure of the absolute maximum amount of energy a generating facility can produce. A dam’s generators, running at 100% capacity would represent the capacity for that unit.

Capacity Factor: A capacity factor is a qualifier that takes into account the fact that no facility is able to work at 100% capacity 100% of the time. As an example, a solar photovoltaic facility can only operate when the sun is shining and does not operate in the dark so if the unit can only operate at its capacity for 25% of the time then its capacity factor would be 25%. Multiplying a generating unit’s capacity, by its capacity factor provides an estimate of the energy that unit will produce (ref).

Depending on your reference, BC’s total energy consumption, inclusive of the energy required to create secondary electricity, was approximately 1,142 PJ in 2000 (ref) approximately 1,264 PJ in 2009 (ref) and/or approximately 1,070 PJ in 2010 (ref). I’m providing multiple numbers because, frankly, I don’t know which one to trust. For the purposes of this discussion I am going to rely on the median, the Globe Foundation number, of around 1,142 PJ of energy a year. This translates to approximately 317,500 GWh of energy. According to BC Hydro, in 2012 BC Hydro’s total energy requirements were 57,083 GWh (ref). This means that BC Hydro supplied less than 18% of the total energy used in BC and that renewable electricity component represents approximately 17% of our yearly energy needs. Now that we have addressed electrical energy that leaves over 82% of our provincial energy usage being derived from sources other than BC Hydro. Of that over 82% remaining energy about 33% (approx 380 PJ) was supplied via fossil fuels (excluding natural gas); about 26% (approx 300 PJ) was supplied via natural gas; about 20% (approx 225 PJ) was supplied via burning of waste biomass in industrial facilities; and the remaining was supplied via coal and coke (mostly for use in cement plants) (ref).

Looking at the numbers above, the simplistic solutions of many of the loudspeaker activists can do nothing but come crashing down. When they claim we can have a “fossil fuel-free BC” what they are saying is that we can somehow replace the almost 60% of our energy needs currently being met with fossil fuels through alternative sources. In order to do so we would need to essentially triple our current renewable energy supply and while that sounds doable (in some people’s minds) that ignores the fact that much of the most readily available hydro has already been built-up. To make it completely clear at how impossible this goal is let’s delve into the numbers some more.

Let’s start by eliminating the natural gas from the equation. We will accept, for the moment, that natural gas represents the cleanest of the fossil fuel sources of energy and go after the dirtier stuff first. Now according to the Globe Foundation, of the 380 PJ of petroleum products used for energy in BC, approximately 50% is gasoline, approximately 24% is diesel, approximately 20% is aviation fuel and approximately 6 % is heavy oil. To further simplify the math let’s now ignore aviation fuel and heavy fuel oil and stick only to the gasoline and diesel. In 2013 British Columbians consumed approximately 4.5 billion liters of gasoline and 2.1 billion litres of diesel fuel (Stats Can). With an energy density of 8.76 KWh/L (ref) for gasoline and 9.7 KWh/L for diesel (ref) converting that usage to pure energy needs translates to 3.942 x 1010KWh or 39,420 GWh for the gasoline component and 2.037 x 1010 KWh or 20,370 GWh. In total the gasoline and diesel consumed in BC in 2013 was equivalent to approximately 59,750 GWh. So if through some feat of magic we were able to convert all the cars and trucks in BC to electrical vehicles, and assuming 100% charging efficiency, you would need to essentially double the electricity supplied by BC Hydro to address the shortfall. Now consider that the Site C dam, once completed, is expected to generate 5,100 GWh of electricity (ref). So to replace the energy currently provided by gasoline and diesel fuels (ignoring natural gas, aviation fuel and fuel oils) we would need to find the energy equivalent to almost 12 Site C dams!

While I recognize that given improved transit and smart planning we may be able to reduce our energy needs for transportation somewhat I will note the following. The vast majority of British Columbia cannot be served by mass transit. There is simply not enough money available to give every driver in Creston, Invermere, Burns Lake, and Fort Saint John an alternative to driving. Heck even in the Greater Vancouver area we cannot seem to find the funds to send a single bus to the Gloucester Industrial Park in North Langley! The biggest new warehousing facility in BC with literally thousands of lower paid warehouse employees demanding bus service and they can’t get a single bus route. Moreover, all the transit in the world will not address the need for panel vans and light trucks. Contractors, suppliers and salespeople cannot use the transit system because they need their tools/supplies. Finally no amount of transit will reduce the need for the transport trucks that bring the groceries to market and supply the boutiques of Vancouver since the last time I looked it was pretty much impossible to move a pallet of milk on SkyTrain.

So let’s have a serious discussion here people. Given this generation’s technologies we are not going to be going cold turkey on fossil fuels anytime soon and if we are not going cold turkey then we had better find a safe way to transport those fossil fuels to where they need to be used. As I have written before, given our dependence on fossil fuels, I would prefer they travel in pipelines and via double-hulled tankers rather than on trains, barges or tanker trucks.

Author’s Note: In an outside conversation I have been asked to consider how many nuclear plants would be necessary to address our gasoline and diesel needs in BC. Since I wrote this post I came across the 100% WWS USA paper (discussed in later blog postings) which provides an estimate of the improved efficiency associated with electrifying the automobile industry. Based on their numbers, improvements in efficiency associated with electrifying automobiles and trucks could reduce the amount of energy required to operate our automobiles by as much as 32% (excluding losses associated to transmission, bad batteries etc…). Thus it could be argued that we would only need about 46,000 GWh of power to run our automobiles and trucks. This brings us down from 12 Site C dams to a mere 9 Site C dams.

As described in the original documents Site C is anticipated to have 1,100 MW of installed capacity and our newly calculated equivalence would represent a need for approximately 9,920 MW of capacity. Each of the CANDU reactor units in the Darlington nuclear power plant in Ontario is rated at approximately 881 MW of capacity and Darlington has four units (3512 MW of installed capacity). So to meet our gasoline and diesel energy requirements using CANDU reactors would take the equivalent of approximately 3 Darlington nuclear generating stations.

Posted in Fossil Fuel Free Future | 28 Comments

When peer-review is not enough – On estimates of avian deaths attributable to coal and nuclear facilities

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Blair

This afternoon I was directed (via a tweet from Dr. Judith Curry) to a recent article in the New Yorker by Jonathan Franzen, titled: “Carbon Capture: Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?” The article addresses a topic that is close to my heart and about which I have written a lot in this blog. Specifically, it addresses the threat to ecological communities (in this case birds) posed by the international fight against climate change. As I have discussed in my posts on biofuels and other renewables, I see renewable energy alternatives as a vital part of the fight against climate change; but I also recognize that the implementation of many of these technologies poses significant risks to ecological communities. The Franzen article elicited a strong response from Joe Romm at Climate Progress. The centerpiece of Joe Romm’s “take-down” was a graph from a US News & World Report (USN) article Pecking Order: Energy’s Toll on Birds. The graph in the USN article purports to show the relative avian mortality derived from various energy sources. Two of the most contentious numbers in the graph come from a paper titled “The Avian Benefits of Wind Energy: A 2009 update” by Benjamin Sovacool and published in Renewable Energy 49(2013)19-24 (Ref). Those of you who have followed my blog know I have issues with the Sovacool paper and I remain amazed at how far its influence has spread in the fields of renewable energy and climate change. This paper has come up in my discussions of nuclear energy, wind energy and as in this case on the avian risks of coal as an energy source. But this is not the only place where this paper makes an appearance. The Wikipedia article on the environmental impact of wind power also presents the numbers from this report as the authoritative numbers for use especially in the new metric “Estimated deaths per Gigawatt/hour (GWh)”.

The Sovacool paper seems to be a go-to source for any number of activists and the deeper I read into the paper the more confused I get about how it has gained such prominence. For me, however, it represents a clear demonstration of the weakness of the peer-review process. To be clear, this paper has undergone peer review. Moreover, the peer-reviewers provided comments which the author incorporated into the final product (as described here). My problem is that even after peer reviewer the numbers coming out of this paper appear suspect. To explain my feeling let’s spend a bit more time examining the numbers that are derived from it.

I initially discussed this paper in my blog post Wind Energy and Avian Mortality: Why Can’t We get any Straight Numbers? As I discuss in that post, Dr. Sovacool does a lot of interesting things in this paper. To be clear, nothing he does is unethical. Moreover, he explains his assumptions and has a rational explanation for each of his decisions and extrapolations. My problem is that in virtually every case, his decision/choices would differ from how I would approach the problem. As an example, in my earlier post I break down how he estimates avian mortality associated with wind farms. In the post I demonstrate that using other data that was readily available at the time, entirely different (and much higher) estimates of bird deaths attributable to wind farms can be derived. As I describe in my earlier post, my approach mirrors that of many other organizations and the numbers I generated were consistent with those produced by other organizations and were in line with Canadian numbers generated for a special edition of Avian Conservation & Ecology (ref). This is not to say that Dr. Sovacool’s numbers are wrong, just that they are much lower than those derived by virtually every other researcher who has worked in the field. Having dealt previously with his approach to the problem of avian mortality and wind energy, the remainder of this post will look at how he approached avian mortality and nuclear energy and coal facilities.

With regards to nuclear energy Dr. Sovacool derives an avian mortality rate of 0.416 fatalities per GWh, which he compares to the lower mortality rate he calculates for wind energy (discussed previously). Looking at his analysis, over half his mortality rate nuclear power is derived from uranium mining and milling processes (0.228 GWh). As I discussed previously, this is the first area where I was confused. In his appraisal of wind energy he included only the installed wind turbines without consideration for the mining of rare earths for the wind facilities or for avian deaths attributable to the transmission lines. To derive the mining and milling number for nuclear power he uses two sources. His first is the Canon City Uranium Mill in Colorado which was fined for the death of 40 geese and ducks in 2008. He then uses that one-year number as an estimate for the annual number for the facility (quantified to 0.006 deaths per GWh). His second source involve some open pit mines in Wyoming (not uranium mines mind you but from uranium-bearing formations) which formed pit lakes where selenium (not uranium) associated with the ore leached into the water making them toxic to birds. He then estimated that the high selenium concentrations could kill approximately 300 birds a year (a rough guess and a proxy as he describes it). Using the pit lake results and his “proxy” he then corrects for a much bigger mine size to give him a final number (0.45 deaths per GWh). To generate his mining and processing number he averages the one-off value of 0.006 and the “proxy” + extrapolation number of 0.45 to calculate an average of 0.228 avian fatalities per GWh. The average of these two sources (one of which isn’t even a uranium facility) are then extrapolated for the entire nuclear industry in the United States.

The other component of Dr. Sovacool’s nuclear estimate is based on collisions with nuclear plants (especially cooling towers). To derive this number Dr. Sovacool averages rates generated from four sources. As described at this web site (ref) and confirmed by Dr. Sovacool here (ref) the largest of the four numbers (representing approximately 60% of the combined total) is derived from strikes to cooling towers of an associated fossil fuel plant and not a nuclear facility. Once the data is corrected to reflect the nuclear power plants only (and still relying on Dr. Sovacool’s other numbers) the number decreases from an average of 0.269/GHh to around 0.07/GWh (ref). So restricting ourselves to only the actual nuclear facilities and in all other ways following Dr. Sovacool’s procedures, it is possible to derive an avian mortality rate associated with nuclear of 0.076/GWh. This represents less than 20% of Dr. Sovacool’s reported number and still is likely high based on the choices made in the paper.

The most fascinating case in the paper has to be its derivation of a coal avian fatality rate. Once again he starts by developing an estimate for the upstream effects of coal mining. He starts by looking at mountaintop removal and valley fill operations in four states and considers how the loss of habitat from these facilities will affect Cerulean Warblers (0.02 warbler deaths per GWh in those states). He then extrapolates that number for US coal production. This ignores the fact that approximately 60% of coal mined in the US is from underground mines (ref) and that mountaintop removal and valley fill mines don’t even represent the majority of the coal mined in some of the states where it is still legal (ref). He then looks at collisions with power equipment and averages two studies, one of transmission line strikes in Spain and a second of strikes on the Kincaid Power Plant in Illinois. Using these two locations he derives a mean number for all plants across the United States. Notice how in this case, and this case alone, he includes transmission lines in his calculations. Presumably transmission lines are not necessary for wind installations or nuclear facilities. Moreover, the study he chose to use was not even in the United States, yet it and results from a single other plant were used to estimate U.S. mortality numbers (0.07 deaths/GWh). Surely there exits data from more than a single plant in the US, but if that data exists, it was not used in this paper.

Having looked at the mining and processing (0.02/GWh) and the operation of the units (0.07/GWh) Dr. Sovacool then does something he does not do for other power sources and looks at off-gases from combustion. In this case he derives numbers for acid rain and mercury effects. I lack the patience to go into details about how he derives these numbers, but I welcome anyone with the patience to note that he extrapolates national numbers from acid rain estimates in the Adirondacks and for mercury effects he includes reports that involve decreasing penguin populations (yes he does specifically acknowledge penguin data is used in the derivation of his US numbers). Using these tools he manages to obtain an estimate of approximately 0.11 avian deaths/GWh. So using most of the arrows in his quiver Dr. Sovacool derived a rate of 0.20 deaths per GWh. This number would appear to be clearly exaggerated but was insufficient for this paper and so the last arrow was drawn, that of climate change. In this case Dr. Sovacool relied primarily on a paper in Nature (ref) that presents hypothetical scenarios for bird extinction depending on a number of future climate change scenarios. Using the maximum hypothesized extinction rate for the worst-case scenario presented in that paper he derived (without further explanation) a rate of 4.98 deaths/GWh? Adding the 0.2 deaths/GWh from the other sources with the 4.98 deaths/GWh attributable to “climate change” he derived a rate of 5.18 fatalities per GWh which he then extrapolated to approximately 14.1 million birds a year. It is unclear how the USN report managed to reduce that number to 7.9 million birds a year but once again I lack the energy at this point.

You can probably tell that the effort to examine this paper has tired me out (reading all this has probably tired you out) but going through this painful effort demonstrates just what kind of numbers the activists rely on to make their points. It is a real pity that given the tremendous amount of high quality information existing in the peer-reviewed press, that the activists continue to go back to the same dog-eared papers. They almost always argue that these papers are peer-reviewed and must therefore be reliable. However, as my examination of this paper demonstrates, even when a paper is peer-reviewed, the results might be questionable. Peer review typically only ensures that the work is reproducible and in this case Dr. Sovacool is scrupulous to define all terms and explain his choices. In this, his work is utterly reproducible. The problem with this paper is that in each case you can look at the choices he made and have to ask yourself why he made that choice?

Posted in Renewable Energy | 5 Comments

So Whatever Happened to the Environmental Moderates and Pragmatists?

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Blair

As I noted in my throwback post, the Ensia article about how Environmental activism needs “good cops” and “bad cops” really brought back a lot of memories. But one thing it also caused me to do is to look back at how things have progressed since I wrote that article. The first thing to recognize is that the article was written in November 1994 (due to publishing schedules it ran in the Winter, 1995 edition). This is significant because 1994 was when the fall-out was happening from the Clayoquot protests. For those of you not familiar with the back story, the Clayoquot movement was really the first mass blockade/arrests in BC’s” war in the woods”. This was a time when environmental activism really came of age in our province. Direct action prior to that time had been mostly limited to Greenpeace vessels blocking whaling ships and on land to a relatively very small number of activists like “Earth First!” mostly coming out of Oregon and California. In Western Canada we had seen very few examples of “direct action” prior to Clayoquot and as we all know, we have seen many since.

Civil disobedience was a major component of the protest at Clayoquot and as result a lot of people were arrested for blocking roads and access to the forests. The major difference between the civil disobedience of 1993 and that of 2015 was in the consequences of the protestors’ actions. What a lot of the current generation of protestors seem not to recognize is that there is no “right” to commit civil disobedience. I listen with decreasing interest to protestors 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. One feature of the protests in 1993 that has apparently been forgotten by our current generation of activists, was that back then the protestors did not simply get to walk away after being picked up by the police. These protestors were arrested, charged, and had to face the consequencces of their actions in a court of law. As described in the Wikipedia article on the subject (ref) “of the 932 people arrested, 860 were prosecuted in eight trials with all those prosecuted for criminal intent found guilty”. As recounted, many of protestors ended up spending time in jail. Can you imagine a modern environmentalist discovering that their actions would get them sent to jail?

By 1994, the time of my writing, there were two significantly differing views on how to progress within the environmentalist community, 1) the “activist” route of civil disobedience and direct action and 2) what I called the “pragmatic” approach. At the time, I was strongly influenced by the writings of Alan Borovoy whose book “Uncivil Obedience” I had taken to heart. For those of you not familiar with either, Alan Borovoy was something of a hero of mine. He was a champion of civil liberties and spent a considerable amount of time as the head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. In his book he talked of how activists can work within the system to foment change. He talked of forming alliances, making life challenging for the people on the other side but emphasized the importance of remaining within the letter of the law. My “Rules of Engagement” were drawn from the ideas expressed in his book. The pragmatic approach involved making allies, fighting within the system and making structural changes.

As I describe in my previous post Modern Environmentalism: Trying to replicate the Clayoquot, we all know who won out on that schism in the 1990s. The activists built on their successes and used those successes to purge the moderates from their ranks. Since that time moderate environmentalists have been efficiently and effectively shown the door and the movement is run by the purveyors of the big, loud protests. As a consequence, in the modern environmental movement a moderate or pragmatic environmentalist is about as common as a spotted owl. We are told they exist and one or two are photographed every year, but they are now more noted by their absence than their presence.

This brings me back to the Ensia article quoted above. You see the premise of the Ensia article is that we need both “good cops” and “bad cops” to move ourselves forward. 1994-me would absolutely concur with that sentiment but 2015-me has a question for the author of the Ensia piece (a shorter version of which I have asked online and will append if it arrives):

In this hypothetical scenario of the “good cop” and “bad cop” we all know the bad cops are but I cannot for the life of me find any “good cops”. Can you name any “good cops” that can serve in the role you argue they need to occupy?

As I note, I have not yet received his answer to this question; but I have my own answer. Having small children I have watched the “Lego Movie” more times than I would care to admit and in my mind it presents the best analogy to what we see in the environmental movement today. As in the movie, the good cop has been erased from the picture leaving only bad cops and worse cops. There are no honest brokers or pragmatic environmentalists to serve as “moderators” as they (we?) have all been swept from the stage. Moreover, the potential allies I spoke of in 1994 are no longer out there in the numbers they once were. As I wrote in my earlier post about civil servant salaries, most of the technical specialists in the civil service are underpaid with respect to their private sector peers. What this means is that many of the folks working in the senior levels of the Ministry of Environment, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) etc… are typically there because they have an actual sense of public service and actually want to make a difference. These true public servants are obvious allies of the environmentalists, but instead of being treated as such, they are often treated like enemies. Activists, even now, are occupying a DFO office while the employees of the Environmental Assessment Office are being called “stooges” and “tools of the oil industry”. Not exactly the best way to win their hearts and minds?

So where do we go from here? Well, there is a lost generation of potential allies out there wandering in the metaphorical wilderness. These people, like myself, want to be a part of the solution but are tired of being treated, at best, like unwanted pets and, at worst, as the enemy. As I have mentioned previously, we live in a democracy and in order to advance your cause in a democracy you need at least a plurality of the population on your side. Modern environmentalists have become very good at making enemies and alienating potential allies and very bad at building consensus and creating coalitions. Until they can do the latter they will remain on the outside looking in; all the time complaining bitterly when the people they abuse and mistreat don’t go out of their way to make their lives easier. Until they are willing to give other people the benefit of the doubt they aren’t going to be able to convince the working stiffs, stuck in traffic because of their illegal protests, to support them with their causes.

Posted in Climate Change Politics, Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 3 Comments

Environmentalism and Pragmatism, the two aren’t mutually exclusive – A blast from my past

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Blair

I was reading an interesting article at Ensia the other day about how Environmental activism needs “good cops” and “bad cops” and I could not help but have a mighty case of déjà vu. The reason for my vision was not that I had read this piece before, but rather because I had pretty much written this same piece a long time ago. To be clear, I am not claiming any copyright infringement or plagiarism of any sort. Rather I am pointing out that I had very similar beliefs back when I was still a puppy in the environmental world. I wrote a bit about the topic in my previous post Modern Environmentalism: Trying to replicate the Clayoquot where I recount how in the early 1990s, I worked at the University of Victoria as a research assistant and subsequently a graduate student out of the Department of Chemistry and the School of Environmental Studies. At the time the Environmental Studies Student’s Association (ESSA) produced a periodical called “the Essence” that included contributions from the ESSA membership. The following was written by my and published in the Winter 1995 edition. In a follow-up post I will discuss where I feel we have come since 1995.

Environmentalism and Pragmatism, the two aren’t mutually exclusive (The Essence, Winter 1995)

Having spent several years doing environmental research I have come to learn that there are many environmental problems which cannot be viewed only in black and white. I have had to learn to compromise to get things done. There are numerous extremists out there who feel that accepting a compromise somehow changes one into an anti-environmental collaborator. I suggest to many extremists that they risk losing an incredibly useful asset: the pragmatic environmentalists.

The environmental movement today is facing a crisis. It used to be that people didn’t believe politicians and businesses. Now, polls indicate that some environmental groups are less trusted than the faceless corporations they are battling. This lack of trust results directly from the alienation of large groups of supporters. As the “Green” movement has grown so has the role of “professional” extremists in the decision structure. As a result, those environmentalists who work with, and in, the system to help change it, have become more and more isolated by the increasing extremism of their peers. Environmentalists who work for environmental causes inside governing agencies are being marginalized for being insufficiently “pure” while moderates outside the system are belittled by their extremist compatriots at meetings and are seldom fully included in the decision structure. Some environmentalists in government are even pointed to as part of the problem and not part of the solution. What the new extremist core of the environmental movement must understand is that its most valuable asset is the number and diversity of its people. By setting strict criteria for inclusion in the new environmental “clubs” or “cliques” these extremists are alienating potential supporters. This is resulting in a gradual loss of mainstream support for the environmental cause.

The timing of the demise of environmental power couldn’t be worse. Just as there are psychopaths in our society who have no qualms against causing others bodily harm to get what they want, there are others who have no qualms against destroying the environment for personal or financial gain. These people cannot be stopped by blockades, public pressure or letter campaigns. They can only be stopped by public outrage as displayed through legislation; the development and strict enforcement of government regulations; and prosecution. Thus, the most important objectives of the environmental movement should be insuring that the legal protection of our wild lands is not watered down and that new laws improving the level of protection for those lands are enacted.

Today the environmental movement needs more pragmatic activists. People who understand that most decision makers are motivated by a solid sense of self-preservation…not by idealistic words about the good of society. Pragmatic environmentalists are needed both in and out of the system. Outside to work as mediators in the battles between extremists and policy makers; and inside to develop the laws and regulations and open the doors for discussion. Extremists must understand that both they and the pragmatists need each other. Pragmatists understand the need for extremists on two levels:

1) Extremists are needed to frighten the establishment into accepting compromises; and

2) Extremists represent the moral high-ground (since they argue not for themselves but for all life).

Extremists need the pragmatists for the same two reasons:

1) The establishment is unwilling to get into discussions with the extremists as history has shown that these discussions are generally fruitless and so look to moderates for discussion; and

2) All compromise involves stepping down from the moral high-ground and giving something away. This may be the best course at that time, but it is seldom the total victory desired by extremist philosophy.

It must be understood that one can be both an environmentalist and a pragmatist; being one does not necessarily exclude the other. If the environmental movement is to continue its work and be trusted as protector of the public good, then the extremists and pragmatists must solve their differences. If these differences prove to be insurmountable, then the current trends in distrusting may continue.  One final point: being a pragmatist does not mean one has to be always willing to compromise nor does it mean accepting bad deals. Some issues are too important for compromise. Remember the meek will only get the earth once the strong are done with it.

The Pragmatist’s Rules of Engagement

1) Extremist action almost always results in an extreme response which usually far exceed the initial action.

  • In almost every case of civil disobedience more press is concentrated on the breaking of laws than on the reason for breaking those laws. A fine example of this was the storming of the legislature last year. The resulting press essentially ignored the issues being raised and dealt exclusively with the damage to property etc..If possible attempt to stay within the law as society is less willing to deal with “wild law-breakers” than it is to deal with peaceful, lawful I would advise those looking for alternative methods to get one’s point across to try reading A. Alan Borovoy’s book “Uncivil Obedience”.

2) Just because you don’t get the whole loaf don’t refuse a piece of it.

  • After a while those pieces add up. That is don’t expect everything right away. Accept and build on the small victories.

3) Direct your effort to where it will do the most good.

  • Taking on impossible odds may seem like fun, but drawing away resources from a battle that can be won to fight a battle that cannot be won is the ultimate waste. Choose your battle carefully.

4) Don’t be afraid to become a part of the system. You can’t change nearly as much from the outside as you can from the inside.

  • Some of the most powerful allies to an environmental group sit in the offices of Environment Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the provincial Environment Ministry. These people are almost always sympathetic to the environmental cause and do not deserve the abuse that is often hurled at them.

5) Pissing people off does not make them friendly to your cause.

  • Don’t piss off people who you may need later to help you, and don’t try to upstage people on your own side. Sure ruining a politician’s moment in the sun can be fun, as long as you don’t expect help next time. That often means keeping your mouth shut when you don’t want to.

6) If you are going to make a scene make sure there are a lot of people there to see and make sure some of them are reporters.

  • Most environmental groups do not have the resources to combat large corporations in public awareness campaigns. So if you are going to do something newsworthy make sure the news is there.
Posted in Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 10 Comments

On “soft climate denial”, regionally-appropriate renewables and marginalizing potential allies in the climate change debate

Posted on March 26, 2015 by Blair

While reading my Twitter feed I was recently introduced to a brand new label in the climate change discussion: “soft climate denial/denier”. The label, based on my admittedly limited research, appears to have been introduced to our lexicon by a person familiar to the readers of this blog, the inimitable Eric Doherty, “Transportation planner & @TankerFreeBC Transportation Campaigner”. It appears to be used to describe anyone, regardless of their stated opinions on climate change, who disagrees with the user’s preferred policy options for addressing climate change. The term is very interesting because, in my mind, it pretty much typifies all that is wrong with the politics of climate change in our modern Canadian society. Historically, political and environmental movements have sought to open up their tents to encourage like minds to join their causes. The basis for this was a recognition that in order to achieve gains in a modern, democratic society you need to convince a majority (or at least a plurality) of the population as to the righteousness of your cause. The modern environmental movement, however, seems to have mostly abandoned this approach.

Consider me, according to some activists I am described as a “soft climate denier”. Now consider where I stand on the major issues. As I have described elsewhere at this blog, I acknowledge the scientific principles underlying the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and believe it is inarguable that anthropogenic climate change is occurring. I have been clear that I believe that human causes are responsible for the majority of the climate change observed in the modern era. In this my viewpoint represents the “consensus” view, as per the most recent IPCC report. My sole potential deviation from the general “consensus” is that based on my technical knowledge, and on my reading of the trends in the recent academic literature, I believe that climate sensitivity will eventually be determined to be at the bottom end of the range reported in the IPCC Working Group I Report. I am thus, in all respects, a purveyor of the “consensus” view of climate change.

As I have pointed out before, one of the goals of this blog is to help alleviate the root causes of climate change (the anthropogenic increase in Tyndall gas concentrations) through the advancement of regionally-appropriate renewable technologies. I use the term “regionally-appropriate” here to acknowledge that not all technologies are ideal in all situations. In British Columbia we have an abundance of hydro, geothermal and wind resources. These resources are so abundant that our government-owned utility (BC Hydro) already generates over 86% of its electricity from hydro power (ref). Moreover, with planned run-of-the-river and static hydro projects (Site C in particular) we already have the potential to supply over 100% of our provincial energy needs through the use of hydro power alone. That being said, numerous wind energy projects are either operating or in development and some limited efforts are underway to exploit the bountiful geothermal resources available in the southern interior. One area where BC is not as well blessed is in solar potential. While much of the Peace Region and southern interior gets plentiful sunshine, other parts of our province are not as blessed. Consider the City of Prince Rupert. Based on the references I can find it has one of the lowest average levels of solar insolation in North America with an average value of approximately 3.7 hours/day (ref). So while a photovoltaic power installation might be an acceptable energy option in the Okanagan, in Prince Rupert this might not be the case. I’m sure any number of readers are going to disagree with me on this so let me explain my reasoning.

The first thing we must recognize is that photovoltaic solar cells don’t just magically appear, they have to be manufactured and the fabrication of solar cells is a very energy-intensive process. It has been calculated that the total equivalent CO2emissions for a square meter photovoltaic solar panel (imported from China) adds up to between 1,243 kg and 1,809 kg of CO2 (ref is in German but translates nicely in Google translate). In order for the solar panel to make environmental sense it has to produce more energy over its lifetime than was used in its production. Given the level of solar insolation and average lifespan of a solar panel in Prince Rupert, covering your roof with solar panels will actually generate much more CO2 than simply relying on the power supplied by BC Hydro. In the reference cited above, the author actually examines photovoltaic solar installations in Germany and establishes that in much of that country solar energy may be less environmentally advantageous than producing the same amount of energy using natural gas or even, surprisingly, high-efficiency coal power generation. Thus in my mind further hydro generation or geothermal would be a regionally-appropriate renewable technologies in BC while any solar installation would have to demonstrate, on a case-by-case basis, that it actually improved our net carbon position.

Being interested in evidence-based decision making, I have striven to provide the most reliable information on both the strengths and weaknesses associated with renewable energy alternatives. Because I put all the information out there, my blog has been cited both by people who support enhancing these technologies and by those who challenge this orthodoxy. Apparently to some this is a bad thing. As an example, I have been sent messages by observers when they see my work on pipelines cited by “pro-oil sands groups”. The messages typically blame me because my information is being “misused”. To be clear when they say “misused”, it does not mean “used out of context”, but rather it means “used in context by someone with an opposing viewpoint”. I find this complaint problematic because one of the critical features of evidence-based decision making is that the information generated in the process is intended to be used in making decision, by people on both sides of the discussion.

Since I am admitting my sins, let me admit to my biggest one in the eyes of the activists out there: I am a pragmatist. I acknowledge that in the foreseeable future we are not going to see a complete phase-out of fossil fuels for automotive, aviation and cargo ship uses. We simply lack the infrastructure and technologies to provide a viable alternative source of energy-dense fuels to power our trucks, airplanes, diesels and other small engines. Since fossil fuels are going to be necessary for the foreseeable future, I believe it is imperative to ensure that our necessary fuel and crude supplies are transported in the most environmentally sound manner possible, which in BC means by pipelines and double-hulled tankers and not by rail. To double this sin, I am also something of a nationalist. I believe that until the world can get a handle on controlling carbon it is better that the fuels used in North American automobiles and the crude refined in North American refineries comes from sources with North American environmental standards rather than those of Nigeria or Venezuela and that the profits from that production goes to help pay for our Medicare and not to fund foreign dictators or export civil wars.

So let me recount my myriad of “sins” in the eyes of the dyed-in-the-wool, dedicated, climate change activists. I am a believer in AGW and the “IPCC consensus” but I do not subscribe to the most extreme interpretations provided by the Bill McKibben’s of the world. I have looked at renewable technologies in sufficient detail to recognize that not all technologies are going to be applicable in all situations and that any decision about renewable energy choices should be informed by data rather than ideology. Most sinfully, I care enough about our shared ecological heritage to be unwilling to sacrifice it on the altar of some demonstrably ineffective attempt to “strangle the oil sands”. For these heresies I, among many, am considered a “soft climate denier”. I am considered unworthy to be heard in the councils of the pure and for some am considered no better than the worst of the denialists out there, someone to be muted, blocked or ignored. The problem is that if you are trying to build a movement to address an important and far-reaching problem like anthropogenic global warming it seems sensible to try and expand your tent. You should be looking to recruit people like me rather than excluding us because we don’t pass some ideological purity test. Unfortunately, that is not how the modern environmental movement works, for them you are either with them in ALL things, or you are not…..

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 11 Comments