On renewables and compromises Part II Rare earths in renewable technologies

Posted on December 25, 2014 by Blair

In my first post on renewables I wrote about geothermal energy and the compromises we need to make in order to make geothermal energy a reality in BC. As everyone knows, geothermal isn’t the only type of renewable energy available to us and it isn’t the only one that requires some compromises.

As an environmentalist I care that we maintain the quality of our local environment but I also have another concern: ensuring fairness in environmental outcomes. We live on a finite planet which we share with other peoples and species. I find it intensely hypocritical when a NIMBY says, I want the fruits of this technology but I am uninterested in putting up with the issues associated with its production and distribution. With this in mind I would like to talk about the dirty little secret of the renewables industry: rare earth elements.

Rare earth elements or rare earth metals (usually I just call them rare earths) consist of a set of 17 chemical elements at the bottom part of the periodic table. More specifically, they consist of 15 lanthanides, plus scandium and yttrium. The rare earths share a number of similar chemical properties and while they are called “rare” that is just with respect to other more common elements. In fact rare earths are fairly abundant. In Canada we have large deposits of rare earths in British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, Alberta,Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador

So why are rare earths so important? Well they are the elements that have allowed us to develop all these incredible renewable energy technologies. Neodymium is the “magic” ingredient that makes high-power permanent magnets a reality. Lanthanum and cerium are what make catalytic converters work. Your cell phone, your LCD screen, your hospital’s PET scanner all depend entirely on the existence of rare earths. To be clear, we are not talking about traces of the stuff either. A single large wind turbine (rated at about 3.5 megawatts) typically contains 600 kilograms of rare earth metals. European Parliament researchers have established that major deployment of photovoltaic cells and wind turbines may have a serious impact on the future demand of 8 significant elements: gallium, indium, selenium, tellurium, dysprosium, neodymium, praseodymium and terbium (admittedly some of those are not rare earths but are mined in similar mines/geologic formations). According to a study by MIT researchers, dysprosium demand could increase by 2,600% over the next 25 years and neodymium demand could increase by as much as 700%. Both materials have exceptional magnetic properties that make them especially well-suited to use in highly efficient, lightweight motors and batteries.

So accepting that rare earths are critical to the continued development of renewable technologies, what does this have to do with compromises and environmental fairness? Well the issue with rare earths is that when they do show up in quantities/quality suitable for mining they are very hard to refine and the refining process is a very energy intensive and a very messy affair. Refineries include huge acid baths, produce sulfur gases, need tremendous temperatures and have waste streams that include radioactive isotopes and other components of environmental concern. Needless to say, we don’t have any of these industrial sized refineries in North America or Europe. The vast majority of the planet’s refining capacity for rare earths is in China with a small facility in California (Molycorp) and new capacity being developed (consistent with our desire to make others pay the environmental costs for our goods) in Malaysia.

If North American and European countries are really interested in renewable technologies then it is up to these countries to carry some of the environmental freight associated with these technologies. Asking lesser developed countries to deal with the negative consequences of the mining and refining of rare earths is the ultimate in hypocrisy. We ask for clean technologies but refuse to get our hands dirty in the process. We possess the best regulatory and technical abilities in the world but leave this environmentally risky technology to countries with lax environmental standards and little or no government oversight. The arguments I hear are that companies are not willing to invest in countries with strict regulatory requirements, but if there is one area where government support would appear necessary it is the development of rare earth capabilities. Like Swan Hills in Alberta which, while controversial, addressed a serious environmental need so do we need a rare earth refinery in North America and in a perfect world another in Europe. As for my friends in the environmental industry, once again we need a willingness to compromise. If you want wind energy, advanced photovoltaic solar, and advanced battery technologies, and don’t want to been seen as hypocrites, then get behind the drive to win the social license for rare earth mining, refining and research.

Posted in Renewable Energy | 10 Comments

Modern Environmental Fairy Tales: "Moving Back to the Land" and the 100 Mile Diet

Posted on December 24, 2014 by Blair

When I socialize with my environmental friends one of the most common themes is their dream to move “off the grid” and live off the land. This idea of moving to a neo-Walden and experiencing a Thoreau-like existence seems to be a common theme amongst my environmental friends and apparently I am not alone. In his 1992 book “Green Delusions” Martin Lewis wrote about the new “Arcadians”. The term was used to describe environmentalists who wanted to go back to a simpler time and live off the land.

Unfortunately, what these Arcadians don’t seem to understand is that with our modern population numbers, living off the land is simply not ecologically sustainable. Ultimately as the human population has continued its presumably logistic growth towards some ultimate peak the result has been a squeeze on the ecosystems necessary to maintain a human presence on planet earth. Regardless of how you feel about global warming/climate change/etc… you should want a planet that is fit for human habitation and that means leaving room for non-humans to thrive and survive. Moreover, I would argue that functioning, healthy ecosystems have an intrinsic value exclusive of human needs. We are caretakers of this planet and allowing nature its rightful place is, in my opinion, a base requirement that humankind owes the planet.

Now imagine a world where the 2 million people in the Metro Vancouver area all moved to self-sufficient homesteads. Consider what our suburban lifestyle has done to our natural spaces and now consider what it would look like if each one of those lots was an acre or two and filled with personal-farms? Forget about the Agricultural Land Reserve we would have small inefficient farms occupying every wild space to the Rocky Mountains and don’t even get me started on environmental Kuznet curves and how our current quality of living actually results in improved environmental outcomes.

Serious environmental scholars understand that the best way to preserve nature is actually to get the majority of our population into cities where we can reduce per-capita energy costs through mass transit, shorter travel distances for supplies and shared heating/cooling in energy-efficient high-density housing. The more spread out your community, the less likely that centralized services like sewer, water and gas are possible and the more expensive the cost to maintain the services. We worry about our groundwater quality now, imagine what it would be like with personal farms on septic fields covering the entire Fraser Valley.

Another theme in the environmental community is the idea of eating locally with the biggest fad being the 100 mile diet. From an environmental perspective regional self-sufficiency in food is a loser. Large-scale farming, with its ability to maximize crop yields and thus reduce land needs, is a necessity in a world of 7 billion souls. Anyone really interested in this topic should read The Locavore’s Dilemma by Desrochers and Shimizu. They comprehensively deconstruct the environmental arguments for the 100 mile diet and the concept of “food miles”.

The activists point out that the food then needs to be moved by ship or airplane but Desrochers and Shimizu point out 82% of the estimated 30 billion food miles associated with U.K.-consumed food are generated within the country, with car transport from shop to home accounting for 48% and transport to stores/warehouses representing 31% of food miles. As for carbon dioxide equivalents, as Tasmin MacMahon notes in Macleans: Research from the U.K. comparing local tomatoes with those imported from Spain showed the U.K. tomatoes, which had to be grown in heated greenhouses, emitted nearly 2,400 kg of carbon dioxide per ton, compared to 640 kg for the Spanish tomatoes, which could grow in unheated greenhouses. Those of you in BC will remember the uproar when the local greenhouses were forced to deal with air quality regulations and what that meant for profitability of the farms.

 As for organic farming, the desire to reduce fertilizer residues in your food is a good thing but the reduced crop yields derived from organic farming is the exact opposite of the methods needed to feed the planet. Moreover recent research suggests that most organic food isn’t appreciably safer and the research is definitive that organic foods are no healthier than food from non-organic farms. Meanwhile, the widespread use of “natural” fertilizers in organic farms can lead to the contamination of groundwater supplies with nitrates and in exceptional cases animal wastes and e-coli. While factory farms have their own fertilizer/waste issues, they tend to be much more tightly regulated and have the financial wherewithal to invest in the most efficient treatment systems. Not to mention that in sufficient quantities/qualities, their outputs can actually have some value on the open market.

 I hate to be a big humbug to my activist friends this Christmas season, but as a pragmatic environmentalist I have to burst their bubbles and crush their dreams. The thought that we can, as a society, move back to the past is an environmental fairy tale and would be an ecological and human disaster of almost biblical proportions.

Posted in Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 7 Comments

Modern Environmentalism: Trying to replicate the Clayoquot

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Blair

In early 1990, I was hired as a research assistant by a pair of Chemistry Professors at the University of Victoria (UVic). One of the professors was also the Chair of the brand new University of Victoria School of Environmental Studies. I served as a research assistant out of the school until 1994 when I was invited to do an Interdisciplinary PhD in Chemistry and Environmental Studies. In 1999, I was one of the very first UVic PhDs with the words “Environmental Studies” on their degree.

So why am I giving you this back-story? At UVic I was a science grad immersed in a school made up mostly of students uninterested in environmental science preferring environmental history or environmental politics. The fourth year students I helped teach talked of the issues with “toxic” chemicals but, when asked, could not explain how toxicity was established nor could they explain what “CEPA toxic” actually stood for? This was the era of the birthing of the modern environmental movement in BC. When I started working at UVic, Clayoquot had not yet happened. When it did our department was one of the places from which the foot soldiers of the protests were drawn and resources for the protests were sourced. I had a ring-side seat at the time and watched as a devoted environmentalist keen on advancing the cause. At the time I saw a need for both pragmatists and activists in the movement. I saw the pragmatists as the ones to get things done while the activists scared the government into talking to the pragmatists and the public into accepting concessions. I was very wrong at the time. The activists won the day at Clayoquot while the pragmatists were unable to get anything accomplished.

The victory appeared to reinforce the activist’s beliefs that working with governments was a fool’s game and that activism without referral to, or the constraints of, democratic decision-making was a faster way to advance the cause. I argued at the time with my friends that a dedicated voting block of activists could influence policy from within established political parties (specifically the NDP) but my colleagues chose a different path. Over the years the movement has become more divorced from mainstream democratic processes and now with their access to the financial support of rich philanthropists and well-meaning individuals they appear to see little reason to be accountable to anyone.

So what has that left us with now? Groups so devoid of oversight that they would desecrate a world heritage site in order to enhance their message. NGO’s so single-mindedly anti-science that they would let third-world children go blind rather than consider the option of Golden Rice. Activists who will block a safer technology (oil-by-pipelines) while doing nothing to address much more environmentally damaging approaches (oil-by-rail). Even President Obama blindly arguing that Keystone is only good for Canada when all Keystone will do is replace oil imports from an enemy bent on destroying the American way of life (Venuzuela) with oil from a reliable ally (Canada). What is more troubling is that the organizations are staffed by the same people I saw as a University TA. We have science-blind activists like 350.org whose aim to return the world to 350 ppm can only be accomplished by an immediate decarbonization of our industrial base, presumably coupled with a massive human die-off. How else could they not only stop the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations but actually see it decrease by 13%?

What the children of the Clayoquot seem not to have learned is that the reason they ultimately won was not their tactics but because their cause was right. The logging of the last of the ancient rainforests was a betrayal of our ecological heritage and the protection of this heritage garnered broad public support. Their tactics brought the logging to the world’s attention but the cause was what won them the fight.

The modern environmental movement continues to try to repeat the tactics that won in the Clayoquot. When I talk to these activists the impression I get is that they think the Clayoquot was won due to their tactics. They seem to believe that repeating the tactics will repeat the outcome regardless of the cause being forwarded. In doing so I see them ignoring what got them the win in the Clayoquot: a good cause, sold well. Be it pipelines, coal trains or climate change until they can get a coherent message that they can actually sell to the public, all the tactics of civil disobedience will not get the outcome they are looking for. The people fighting pipelines in BC’s north (Northern Gateway) have made their case; they have mobilized public support around legitimate environmental concerns and thus they will likely win that fight. The people fighting the Trans-Mountain (or frankly Energy East) have not done the leg-work and until they do they will sound like a shrill whistle and will not build the traction they need with the public to actually win this battle.

Addendum:

I wrote this piece three years ago but it is becoming more apt every day. The only change I can see might be the ultimate conclusion. In the case of Trans Mountain the location of the protest site so close to a large community and the lack of support from the provincial government may allow the protestors to block this project. In doing so we run the risk of un-elected NGO’s and activists dictating policy. Something we should fear in a world where there are more and more scientifically illiterate activists who have good intentions but insufficient knowledge to recognize the consequences of their actions: putting our marine and freshwater at risk because they don’t understand relative risks or have been convinced that we really don’t need fossil fuels even as they enjoy all the benefits brought to them by fossil fuels and providing no viable alternative for those resources.

Posted in Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 2 Comments

On renewables and the need for compromise, Part I: Geothermal

Posted on December 16, 2014 by Blair

So as I’ve mentioned previously, I see a next step in the eventual move to decarbonization being the development and implementation of renewables as alternatives. Anyone with an interest in the topic of renewables in BC should spend several hours perusing the EnergyBC website. It is a great resource for professionals and lay readers alike and represents the investment of hundreds of hours of research by some very bright minds out of UVic. It is a credit to Dr. Whiticar and UVic and should be on every science teacher’s list of resources for their students. Since EnergyBC says so much more than I could hope to on the basics and potentials of renewables in BC, I will leave the heavy lifting to them and will stick to detailing issues that I find particularly important or that relate to my particular background.

So let’s start with what I think is the most viable renewable energy source for BC: geothermal energy. Geothermal is a relatively mature technology that has been used all over the world. Once constructed it is pretty close to carbon neutral and for an energy technology is remarkably clean. You would think that an essentially clean, renewable, carbon-neutral energy source would be the belle of the environmentalist’s ball. In that you would be mistaken. You see we live in a province where getting anything built is becoming increasingly challenging. We don’t just have NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) we have BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). We don’t just need a successful environmental impact assessment; regulatory and first nations approvals; and financial agreements, we also need to obtain a “social licence” which no one seems to know how to both get and keep. For those of you not involved in the resources field a “social licence” is not actually a formal licence it is rather a term used to describe the buy-in from local communities and stakeholders that will allow a project to actually proceed. As the Trans-Mountain/Burnaby Mountain protests demonstrated, without a buy-in from local communities and stakeholders even the simplest task (in this case the drilling of two boreholes for geotechnical testing) can become an incredibly challenging and cost-prohibitive activity.

So what does this have to do with geothermal energy? The energy that the Green Party of BC calls a “green tech powerhouse”? Well take a look at this map of the geothermal potential in BC: Now consider this picture of BC protected areas. As you can see our most bountiful geothermal resources are situated right smack in the middle of some of our biggest and most beautiful parks. A further difficulty is that while the map shows big red splotches of rich geothermal potential, all that potential is located deep underground. Unfortunately Mother Nature has not prepared any big “geothermal power here” signs so the only way to find this power is to drill. Exploratory drilling is not a field for the faint of heart or the light of wallet. It is an expensive and time-consuming process. It involves establishing base camps, ferrying in supplies and then lots of hard, expensive, loud and often dirty work. You might spend months and hundreds of thousands of dollars setting up a drill program only to discover that the land isn’t right or some underground feature makes exploiting the resource impossible in that area. I won’t even go into the land tenure process in BC as we don’t have enough space to open that can of worms.

As for the drilling, I haven’t even told you the worst part. You see while the initial drilling can be done using good old-fashioned coring technologies, if you want to actually make the geothermal resource available you will need to frack. Yes, I used the f-word. While those of us comfortable with the world of drilling can live with the concept of fracking; a huge community of environmentalist have built their brand by fighting fracking. Now consider what will happen when someone suggests fracking in a National park?

As for the operation of a geothermal plant, well these facilities use tons of water. No I am not being metaphorical, in this case I literally mean tonnes of water. Cooling plants, steam plants, geothermal fluids all this water has to come from/go somewhere and the geothermal water, having been trapped in the hot subsurface, is usually laced with metals and sulfur and is unsuitable for disposal on land. Happily, especially in closed-loop systems, almost all the water can be re-directed back into the subsurface but we are still talking about complicated chemistry here as the metals-laced, high-sulfur water will leave deposits in the piping which will need treatment. Any output from that treatment process will then need to go somewhere. Even the best closed-loop system will still have some emissions, which in BC are going to end up in our parks. Even the best closed-loop systems also need an external water supply, which in our parks means from nearby lakes, rivers or streams.

To make things worse, since we still don’t have the technology to safely transmit power through the air, all these geothermal plants will have to be connected to the power grid through high-power transmission lines. As any biologist will tell you, transmission lines are of particular concern in protected areas. Like any other linear development they increase the likelihood of, and number of, human visitors. They also split ecological communities and form access routes for predators and invasive species.

Cost-wise both the initial installations of the geothermal facilities and the construction of the transmission lines are very expensive and they need almost all their costs paid up front. Before you can generate a penny of revenue or produce a watt of power you need to spend millions on drilling and up to $1 million/km for the transmission lines.

By now you might have noticed that the title of this post includes the word “compromise” and I spent much of my introduction talking about “social licence”; you might ask why? Well as I mentioned earlier, geothermal is actually one of the most environmentally benign of the renewable energy alternatives out there, but even it has some serious drawbacks. In order for geothermal to make a major dent in our energy mix in BC it is going to take a LOT of money and a LOT of goodwill and compromises. These are the types of compromises our friends in the environmental movement have been completely unwilling to make in the past. They want the fruits of the fossil fuel industry but don’t want the mess of the fossil fuel industry. They talk the talk on geothermal but have not, to this point, done anything to make potential investors feel comfortable about investing here. If we are going to make geothermal energy work in BC we are going to need to convince a lot of people with very deep pockets to put up huge sums in upfront money to build these facilities. Frankly, given the noise and bluster of the environmental discussion, I cannot see this happening. No amount of consultation seems adequate to build up the social capital necessary to allow CEOs to trust their financial capital on these types of developments. Until the same folks who insist we come up with alternative energy sources actually help pave the way for these developments, they are not going to happen. Given the mess of the last few months on the traditional energy files, no CEO in his/her right mind would invest the time and effort to get an unorthodox energy file up and started.

So I suppose the question I would like to pose to my friends in the environmental movement is this: what are you going to actually do, besides paying lip service, to actually help get geothermal the push it needs to become a viable part of the energy mix in British Columbia? You have made British Columbia an unfriendly place to invest in resource plays but in order to get off the fossil fuel treadmill we need alternatives and that means making compromises….are you up for it?

Posted in Canadian Politics, Renewable Energy | 5 Comments

About that climate "consensus" we keep reading about

Posted on December 14, 2014 by Blair

As described in my last post, I am a “lukewarmer”. That means I acknowledge the scientific principles underlying the theory of AGW. I have little difficulty with the general findings of the IPCC and that anthropogenic sources are responsible for most of the heating observed since 1951. But I also believe that based on the trend of the most recent literature, climate sensitivity will eventually be determined to be at the bottom end of the range reported in the IPCC Working Group I Report. Funny thing though, for the “crime” of expressing this opinion, I have been called a “denier” by the purveyors of the political “consensus” that dominates the on-line discourse in the field.

So I gave in and used the magic word: “consensus”. Up until now I have been talking about the actual scientific consensus. To be clear here, when I talk about the scientific consensus, I am talking about what the IPCC reports and actual climate scientists actually say, not the “consensus” trumpeted in the media by social, political and environmental activists. Why do I distinguish between the two? Well the answer is pretty simple, this thing the activists call the “consensus” has little in common with the actual scientific consensus in the field, as defined by what the IPCC has actually presented in black ink on the pages of its reports. The “consensus” is a political construct created by a band of environmental NGOs and activist organizations. These organizations are made up of well-meaning but essentially scientifically blind [see my previous definition of the term] political activists, social scientists and lay people most of whom are deep in a Dunning-Kruger haze of their own good intentions. Many have read at least some portion of the IPCC Summary for Policymakers. But as those familiar with the process can explain, the Summary document, while initially produced by the scientists, is only approved line-by-line by votes which means that it is a political and not a scientific document. A few of these activists may have read the Working Group I (Physical Science Basis) Summary for Policymakers and virtually none have read (or frankly have the expertise to understand) the actual chapter reports prepared so carefully by the scientific professionals.  

The reason this is important is that the actual technical chapters highlight the limitations of the global climate models and highlight why decision-makers should be cautious. One issue I do have with the IPCC reports is that we are presented with levels of confidence which are actually nothing of the sort. For those of us used to seeing error bars; levels of significance based on testing and repetition; and qualifiers in reports much of the field of climate science is frustrating to say the least. The IPCC confidence levels are unsupported by statistical rigour and while they may be correct, are not in the least reproducible. I will acknowledge that they do, at least, represent the best guesses from the author group that prepared the reports. This essentially self-selected group has expertise I cannot match but that being said, they were limited by the information that was used to write their chapters. In the case of climate sensitivity they did not have the most recent technical papers, since the cut-off for inclusion in the Working Group I report was March 2013. The balance of the newer papers have added to the weight of evidence at the lower end of the IPCC range.

Based on the trend of the most recent literature, I expect that the science will settle in the 1.5 oC – 2.5 oC range. So what does that mean? It means that in order to avoid serious consequences in the future we need to identify a path to decarbonizing our power and transport systems. But what else does it mean? Well, if the models predicting low sensitivity (i.e. less than 2 oC per doubling) are correct then the atmosphere can tolerate substantially higher carbon dioxide concentrations than if the sensitivity is higher (say 6oC). In the lower case maybe mitigation can be used to reduce societal/ecological stress while we work our way towards a goal of stable atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations (where emissions essentially equal deposition). If it turns out to be 6 oC plus per doubling, then not only had we better ban all coal plants tomorrow, it is unlikely that we can avoid serious ecological damage/cataclysms as we deal with a + 6oC – +10oC world, because even if everything goes perfectly in Lima we are on a path to a doubling plus before we can get this thing in hand.

As I said, were I confident that this alarmist “consensus” was reliable I would argue that immediate responses were necessary and damn the expense. However, I believe that the lower end of the scientific consensus will win out and that means it is time to consider the Precautionary Principal. Wait there is another of those magic terms. I don’t mean the “Precautionary Principal” used by activists to ban all development and scientific advances. I mean the real Precautionary Principal as expressed as Principal 15 in the Rio Declaration which states:   

“In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

Yes, you read that right; the actual Precautionary Principal includes a qualifier for cost-effectiveness. The activists pretend that line is not there as they look to mandate massively intrusive and completely unworkable ideas on an unwilling populace without demonstrating their effectiveness or addressing major concerns. Consider the first few rounds of this game: the Chicago carbon exchange went belly up, tradable carbon credits ended up being scammed world-wide, ethanol requirements for fuel have taken much needed calories out of the global food chain and activists are talking about preventing developing countries from getting the energy needed to pull their populaces out of poverty. I don’t have time for all this now but I suggest you read up on “environmental Kuznet curves” to get a feel for where I am going. That being said, I want to invest heavily in renewables and I happen to live in BC where our carbon tax has slowed down the production of CO2. Given that history, I think it might be a good next step still we need to get societal buy-in to get the right combination of ideally low carbon power for each region and that means a debate as to what represents “right” for each region, but that is a topic for a future post.

Posted in Climate Change | 2 Comments

My Lukewarmer post, or how to lose friends on both sides in the AGW debate:

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Blair

 So in my first couple posts I have talked about pipelines and fossil fuels, but people seem unwilling to accept my views on pipelines until I answer the big question: where do I sit on the topic of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

Way back in 1859 John Tyndall demonstrated that selected gases including, water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane can intercept/absorb Infra-red (IR) radiation. A few years later Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius did the first experiments/calculations to estimate how changes in the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should affect global temperatures. Since then the field of chemistry has refined the number and it is now generally accepted that that the direct climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide (excluding all positive or negative feedbacks) is roughly 1.2oC of warming per doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations. What that means is in the absence of feedbacks (positive or negative) every doubling of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere should result in an increase in the global mean temperature of approximately 1.2oC.

So what does this mean? Well overwhelming consensus in the field is that a majority of the observed warming from 1951 to 2010 (numbers from the IPCC 2013 Physical Sciences Report) can be attributed to anthropogenic increases in the concentrations of Tyndall gases in the atmosphere (I, and many others, find that term “greenhouse gases” imprecise. A recent suggestion has been to refer to these gases as “Tyndall Gases” which I find both appropriate and clean as the name carries no additional baggage). There are some contrarians who challenge this basic consensus, but it would be difficult to be considered a serious thinker in the field if you did not accept the basic chemistry of AGW.

Now given the chemical reality of AGW; the next research issue to be addressed deals with the equilibrium climate sensitivity of the atmosphere/biosphere to increases in Tyndall gases. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has this to say:

Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C (medium confidence). The lower temperature limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2°C in the AR4, but the upper limit is the same. This assessment reflects improved understanding, the extended temperature record in the atmosphere and ocean, and new estimates of radiative forcing.

– The IPCC includes an important footnote: No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.

So the IPCC says they do not have a best estimate for climate sensitivity and the manner in which models handle sensitivity and feedbacks remains a topic of furious debate and a tremendous amount of research. Every month a new paper is published that changes the best science on the topic.

On the extreme end of the warming side are those who believe in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). These individuals believe that climate sensitivity is at the highest end of the spectrum and a tipping point will be reached at some, still-to-be-defined, concentration of Tyndall gases in the atmosphere causing a positive feedback loop that will result in cataclysmic heating. The result will be a substantial change occurring over a very limited time frame (in tens of years rather than hundreds or thousands of years). That is how they translate the naturally expected 1.2oC of warming per doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations into increases ranging from 4.5oC to over 6oC per doubling. Proponents of CAGW insist that the tipping point is nigh and that we must decarbonize ASAP or risk probable extinction as a species.

I look at the issue differently, my graduate-level courses in global biogeochemical cycles identified that most geochemical cycles involve negative feedback loops that buffer changes. People like me are called “lukewarmers”. We do not assume that positive feedback loops dominate the system but rather a balance of positive and negative cycles are at play with the resultant effect being a relatively minor positive effect. Unsurprisingly, an examination of the historical record demonstrates that changes in global temperature have historically mirrored the direct IR absorbtion characteristics of the increases in the various Tyndall gas concentrations.

So when you read someone talk about the “consensus” understand what that word really means. There is an overwhelming consensus that humans are having an effect on the global climate, but the IPCC (the organization who define the consensus) says:

No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.

The issue is that in the scientific community the issue isn’t settled. The absence of consensus on sensitivity doesn’t stop political and social activists who insist they know better than the climate scientists. As a numerate and scientifically literate individual, I am skeptical, not of the science, but of the purveyors of these political messages. I strongly believe we are affecting our climate and strongly believe we need to decarbonize our economy but that is definitely a topic for a different post.

Posted in Lukewarmers | 6 Comments

On being labelled “pro-oil” and ”pro-pipeline”

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Blair

The morning I found myself in the very interesting position of being the foil in a thoughtful and well-written piece in the Tyee. The piece recounts a Twitter discussion between myself and the author regarding the Burnaby Mountain protest. While I found the article a very interesting and compelling read I was bemused to discover myself labeled as both “pro-oil” and “pro-pipeline”. The article migrated, naturally, to the issue of climate change and in doing so it passed over the big blind spot of the pipeline protest movement.

We live in a society that is, like it or not, dependent on oil and the products of oil. Our food is produced on farms that need heavy equipment to operate. That food is shipped around the world by airplane, boat and rail all of which rely on petroleum hydrocarbons to operate. Once it arrives in town it is shipped to warehouses and local stores using vehicles running on petroleum fuels. The article talks lovingly about alternative energy technologies but ignores the reality that only oil products (or biofuel alternatives) have the energy density to do this job. No alternative fuel with a sufficient energy density exists to be used in the quantities necessary to replace petroleum hydrocarbons at this time. I will address biofuels in a future post but suffice it to say using food to operate our machinery is a losing proposition in a world of 7 billion hungry souls.

The protestors on Burnaby Mountain bristled when they were called “hypocrites” for complaining about the lack of parking for the protest or that they were using propane heaters or snapping photos on their iPhones. I hesitate to use that word because in my mind in order to be a “hypocrite” you have to know enough about a topic to actually recognize your cognitive dissonance and in the case of many/most of the protestors their lives are so divorced from the science/chemistry that underlies their daily lives that they don’t meet that bar. We live in a society with a small population of the scientific literate and a bulk of the population that while not scientifically illiterate are blind to the science around them and unfortunately, it would seem that the protestors are made up primarily of the latter.

What a lot of these protestors seem to not understand is that petroleum hydrocarbons aren’t just the fuels that run our vehicles or the natural gas to run power plants. Virtually every plastic, “rubber” and other synthetic material is made of petroleum hydrocarbons. Gortex, nylon, spandex, polyester are all petroleum-based. While you see a bag of whole blood in an emergency room, I see blood wrapped in petroleum products that was filtered through petroleum-based filters, is injected into patients using petroleum-based materials and monitored by machines composed of petroleum-based materials. Many of the precursors of pharmaceutical drugs are petroleum-based and the instruments used in their production are petroleum-based. Those iPhones used to record the protest consist of BC aluminum, surrounding petroleum-based circuit boards coated in precious metals mined in BC and run on batteries made of rare earth metals (mined in China as our rare earth mines can’t get opened).

The question I would like to ask our friends at the Tyee is what modern convenience would they like to give up in order to allow for the elimination of the transportation of oil? The computers they use to write their articles? The insulated wires used to transfer the information to the internet? The servers that distribute the information?

Posted in Canadian Politics, Energy East, Pipelines, Trans Mountain | 3 Comments

Follow-up on Trans-Mountain

Posted on November 29, 2014 by Blair

As a follow-up to my previous post I would like to address some comments about the Trans-Mountain pipeline, oil tankers and oil exports from BC. Most of the following numbers are from Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and Washington State documents. If you want references send a request my way.

Let’s start with some numbers. The current Trans-Mountain has a capacity of about 300,000 barrels a day (b/d). Of the total capacity, 221,000 b/d goes to refineries in British Columbia and Washington State and 79,000 b/d is allocated for marine exports. The Chevron refinery in Burnaby gets about 55,000 b/d and the Puget Sound spur line of the Trans-Mountain has a capacity of 170,000 b/d. The Trans-Mountain expansion has two proposed lines: Line 1 would consist of existing pipeline segments and could transport 350,000 b/d of refined petroleum products, light crude or heavy crude oil. The proposed Line 2 would have a capacity of 540,000 b/d and is allocated to the transportation of heavy crude oil. This new pipeline and configuration set-up would, add 590,000 b/d to the existing system for a total capacity of 890,000 b/d. This includes an upgrade of the Puget Sound line to 225,000 b/d.

One fact not well understood in this debate is that there are 5 major refineries in the Puget Sound with a combined capacity of 643,000 b/d. So why is that important? Well a lot of my Victoria friends have said “we don’t want tankers off our coast”. My response to that is you are really late getting into this game since for the last 20 years up to 600,000 b/d of Alaskan crude has been cruising past your proud city. These tankers have traveled down the entire coast of BC and along the west of Vancouver Island before turning west into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and into the Puget Sound with nary a major problem.

A big complaint is that much of the increased pipeline capacity is for “export” but “export” can mean a lot of things. Thanks to the loss of refining capacity in the Vancouver region we actually “export” crude oil and almost immediately need to re-import it as aviation and jet fuel from the Cherry Point refinery in Washington. Another not well known fact is that the Alaskan oil fields are drying up and new sources are needed to keep the Pacific Northwest in fuel. As I write this, new railway capacity is being built to supply up to 725,000 b/d of Bakken crude to the west coast and the Puget Sound refineries. The route will travel over any number of rivers including the headwaters of the Kootenay River and alongside the Columbia Rivers to the Puget Sound. The route risks both our Canadian and American ecological heritage. Every barrel of oil that can reach the Puget Sound via pipeline or in a double-hulled tanker is a barrel not sent overland adjacent to some of the most pristine and biologically diverse freshwater aquatic ecosystems in the world. Put another way, each Aframax tanker (700,000 bbl at 80% full) leaving the Port of Vancouver for the short haul to the Puget Sound could replace over 11 unit trains traveling almost halfway across the continent.

So I’ve thrown a lot of numbers around but what does this mean? The upgrade of the Puget Sound line of the Trans-Mountain could potentially result in a reduction of the amount of crude oil moving down the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Puget Sound and will certainly reduce the amount of oil transported to the Puget Sound by rail from the Bakken oil fields. With the decrease in Alaskan crude an increase of the Trans-Mountain may not significantly change the volume of oil that currently runs down the Strait of Juan de Fuca every day and given transportation costs, it is likely that the major “export” location for Trans-Mountain oil could actually be to the Puget Sound.

As I’ve written before, we need to move towards a society where oil products are not used for power or fuel. But until that time comes we need these products and the safest, most environmentally responsible way to get them to us is via pipelines. The least environmentally responsible ways are via rail and/or truck. While we transition away from fossil fuels lets ensure that we use the safest modes of transport in order to protect our joint ecological heritage.

Addendum: A comment from Dr. Andrew Leach at U of A reminds me of a pertinent fact. Not all the refineries in the Puget Sound have coking capacity. This would limit the amount of bitumen that could be shipped there as a refinery without a coker would be limited to processing crude and not dilbit. While the documentation for Line 2 indicates that it would transport heavy crude, it is assumed that much of that capacity will be in dilbit form.

Posted in Pipelines, Trans Mountain | 2 Comments

Thoughts on Trans-Mountain

Posted on November 29, 2014 by Blair

There is a tremendous misconception in the media and on the streets of Vancouver about the role of pipelines and hydrocarbons in our daily lives. We live in a society that is absolutely dependent on petroleum hydrocarbons derived from oil. Petroleum hydrocarbons aren’t just refined into fuel to run our vehicles, they also serve as the feedstock of the petrochemical industry. Petrochemicals form the basis of all the things that make our modern world work. They are the building blocks of our plastics, our computers, the tools we need to keep us healthy and the drugs we take when we are sick.

The proud defender of the land, Dr. Lynn Quarmby, has built her entire career using petrochemicals to advance her science. Get rid of the petrochemicals in her lab and she would be out of business. Just for interest, how do you think Whole Foods gets their organic kale to market? It is done using big diesel-powered trucks that need fuel.

Edmonton refineries provide up to 60% of the refined petroleum products used in the Lower Mainland, with the remainder supplied by the Chevron refinery in Burnaby and the Cherry Point refinery in Washington. The refined fuel is transported via the Trans-Mountain pipeline and both mentioned refineries are supplied with much/most of their raw products via the Trans-Mountain pipeline. When Gregor Robertson and Derek Corrigan decry the prospect of tankers in Vancouver Harbour, what they don’t tell you is that if the Trans-Mountain pipeline was shut down tomorrow, the result would be hundreds of tankers a year coming into Vancouver to supply our domestic market.

The Trans-Mountain pipeline is over 50 years old and while it is currently safe it is time to consider if a route through Burnaby Mountain might be safer than the current route which runs through Burnaby neighbourhoods. Wouldn’t Kinder Morgan be derelict to not investigate that option? Like it or not, our West Coast society is dependent on oil products to keeps sick babies alive at Sick Kids Hospital and keep Gregor Robertson and Derek Corrigan’s cities running smoothly. These products get to us via the Trans-Mountain pipeline and the protestors better watch out because if they shut the pipeline down, what they will see is hundred of oil tankers in their ports and thousands of rail cars of oil running along their most ecologically vulnerable rivers. Certainly we should move towards a society where oil products are not used for power or fuel. But until that time comes we need these products and the safest, most environmentally responsible way to get them to us is via pipelines.

Posted in Canadian Politics, Pipelines, Trans Mountain | 2 Comments

About Me

Posted on November 28, 2014 by Blair
If you have reached this website you were probably directed here because you were interested in what I have to say about pipelines. While many of these posts will be on that topic, my background is not specifically in pipeline technology and so most posts will not dwell on the topic. Like any new blog I will have to earn your trust and one of the ways of doing that it to tell you a bit about myself.

As my blog names suggests, I am a resident of the Township of Langley, living in the community of Walnut Grove. I have a very selfish reason for being interested in the Trans-Mountain pipeline in that my home is less than 50 m from the current Trans-Mountain right-of-way/pipeline. When I moved into my current neighbourhood, I was fully aware of the proximity of the Trans-Mountain pipeline and was comfortable with its presence. This is of particular note because in my professional life I am a Registered Professional Chemist and a Registered Professional Biologist and have been appointed to the Roster of Approved Professionals by the BC Ministry of Environment’s Director of Waste Management as a Standards Assessment Specialist (Contaminated Sites Approved Professional).

My area of expertise is the investigation and remediation of petroleum hydrocarbon contamination and the assessment of hydrocarbon contamination on human and ecological health. In my work, I have developed expertise in addressing the requirements of the British Columbia Environmental Management Act and its associated Contaminated Sites and Hazardous Waste Regulations for industrial and municipal clients. In my 15 years of practice I have coordinated multi‑stage environmental investigations; developed and implemented remediation plans; coordinated human health and ecological risk assessments and sediment quality/toxicity evaluations; and prepared reports for submission to the Ministry of Environment (remediation completion reports; human health and ecological risk assessments; remedial action plans; preliminary and detailed site investigations; and permit compliance reporting). In addition to provincial regulations, I have developed remediation plans to address the requirements of federal and local legislation and regulations from the Fisheries Act to local and municipal bylaws and have prepared reports for federal, provincial and municipal regulators. 

In my professional capacity I serve as a technical specialist in areas including: industrial chemistry; sources, fate and transport, and bidegradation of chemical contaminants; effects of contaminants on natural systems; and ecosystem restoration. My graduate research was in the fields of Chemistry and Environmental Science and involved improving the availability of high-quality multidisciplinary scientific data for use in environmental decision-making. This included developing standardised protocols to evaluate multidisciplinary data including specialised protocols for organic trace data, toxicological experiments and biological responses to organic contaminants. Coincidentally, one of my original research cases used to develop our methodology was an examination of the field of climate change. As such I have been reading the literature on climate change since the early 1990s and I have some pretty strong opinions on that topic as well.

I’m sorry if the above sounds a bit like bragging, but what I am trying to establish is that in the field of hydrocarbon spills and clean-up I am not a novice. My aim is to inform readers and supply useful information to assist in conducting a reasonable discussion on the transportation and use of petroleum hydrocarbons. I acknowledge that I will not always be the expert (or even right) but will endeavour to make corrections when my errors are pointed out and provide links to those who know more than I do on a topic.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments