Burgess Langshaw Power, University of Waterloo
Last week, the federal government released its long awaited plan to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Bill C-12, if passed, commits Canada to “binding” targets every five years as of 2030 with the goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
The bill is thin on details, due to its focus on establishing an independent 15-member advisory board. This is both a strength, in that it will hopefully include climate scientists, Indigenous people and other expert stakeholders, and a weakness, because it pushes the timeline for specific measures and action further into the future, with 2030 the first target date.
What is most concerning is that by dragging its feet on specific measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the Trudeau government is shoehorning Canadians into expensive, unproven and unreliable technologies.
As a researcher who studies the governance of climate-altering technologies (such as carbon capture and storage), I can assure you that we are already behind on tackling climate change and catching up is going to be expensive. The government’s strategy will likely rely upon technology that isn’t viable in the way it hopes.
Staying on target
Canada has repeatedly failed to meet any of the climate targets it has set in place since 1992. This has left us further behind our Paris climate agreement targets and scrambling to catch up to meet our global commitments.
Not only do we need to meet these climate targets this time around — our international trade partners such as the EU and even China may see us as laggards, further eroding our international credibility — we need to make up for lost time.
The focus of the federal government is on market-driven solutions, including technologies that remove carbon from the air or emissions and lock them away. But carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) are not silver bullets in the fight against climate change.
Canada is home to some of the most successful CCS projects and companies in the world, including the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, Boundary Dam and Carbon Engineering. However, these are expensive demonstration projects. Their use could be targeted to specific sectors (such as aluminium manufacturing), but they will never effectively reduce Canadians’ emissions at scale.
Capturing and storing carbon is expensive, and in some cases outright ineffectual. The United States government spent US$5 billion from 2010 to 2018 on the technology, but it would take additional significant investments, more research and some technological breakthroughs for the technology to lower the cost of capturing carbon to US$94-232 per tonne. This is staggering compared to Canada’s baseline carbon tax of $50 per tonne of emissions by 2022, and when factored into the already low price of Canadian oil, we are left with a most unhappy conclusion.
Who is paying for this?
Typically, companies would pay taxes or levies over time into various programs to pay for negative externalities — the side effects of products or systems they run that cause social, economic or environmental harms. These funds would then be used to pay for those associated costs.
This solution is dubbed “Pigouvian taxation” (after Arthur Pigou). Ireland, for example, introduced a plastic bag tax (as opposed to banning them), which resulted in a 90 per cent decrease in their use.
The problem is that in Canada companies are not paying into any such funds — nor have they — leaving Canadians with no source to pay for this new expense.
So how would Canada find the money to pay for expensive projects such as carbon capture and storage? As it stands, that cost will be passed to the taxpayer. Our current carbon tax circulates the money back into the economy.
Two billion trees
What about Prime Minister Trudeau’s promise to plant two billion trees? Planting trees is, after all, a natural method of carbon capture and storage.
Planting trees is a useful short-term exercise, but trees don’t live forever. Although the soil in boreal forests contains carbon stored there generations ago, it can be released by logging or forest fires, which are getting more severe due to climate change. These types of changes, if not properly managed, can lead to forests becoming carbon sources. https://www.youtube.com/embed/mqbJYIGx9HQ?wmode=transparent&start=0 As northern summers get warmer and drier, boreal forest fires are becoming more intense, meaning they burn deeper into the soil (NASA).
In addition, the darkness of leaves can absorb more incoming energy than the potentially lighter ground surface. Planting trees over areas that would otherwise be snow covered, could actually warm the planet while still absorbing carbon, though more analysis is necessary to understand this issue.
This is not to say that carbon capture and storage or carbon dioxide removal technologies do not have a role to play in the future. Concrete produces four to eight per cent of global emissions, and mandating that all concrete facilities be fitted with carbon capturing technologies could reduce their emissions. While these are expensive, they may be necessary.
Even if the technology were applied to the energy sector, Canadian oil would likely be a net loss on every barrel produced — and who would pay for the cost of moving it to widespread use? The federal government is still reeling from the cost of the Trans Mountain pipeline, the private sector has no appetite to invest in such a venture without guarantees of profitability and despite claims of well-financed conspiracy, environmental groups aren’t exactly flush with cash.
The current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models rely on the deployment of significant amounts of carbon capture and storage in the latter part of the century to meet agreed-upon targets. To rely upon such technologies as a silver bullet for addressing Canadian climate policy, however, is flawed and doomed to fail. When the Government of Canada releases precise details for meeting the climate targets outlined in Bill C-12, it cannot rely upon carbon capture and storage or carbon dioxide removal if there is any hope in succeeding.
Burgess Langshaw Power, PhD Student, Global Governance program at the Balsillie School for International Affairs, University of Waterloo
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Haha! What is this article? I cannot even comment on all of the non sequiturs.
AS John McEnroe, the tennis champ famously said, “Man, you can’t be serious!”
Is there science in Canada anymore?
No. Unfortunately there are only government employees, bureaucrats, who are trotted out as experts to provide no information whatsoever about any particular government policy, but allows the politicos to “follow the science”.
It is truly dispiriting.
I do not think any “carbon capture” projected has worked.
The wealthy, watermelon, ideologues who control the Prime Minister, know this but, well, they are ideologues.
Pardon, plants work very indeed.
Trudeau is well on the way to bankrupting the country. He brags that we have a lower dept per capita than most developed countries, but he conveniently omits the fact that the provinces have their own massive debt that the federal government is ultimately responsible for. There is only one taxpayer after all, and that taxpayer is tapped out and probably unemployed. Our fearless leader, the part-time drama teacher, has destroyed one of the wealthiest countries in the world. I’ve been thinking of moving to the states but they appear to be in the process of electing his Justin’s idiot twin.
Yes Robert, we specialize in stupid here. Especially as it is home to the ninny in chief pictured above.
But careful about carbon capture projects “not working”, that depends on their purpose.
The Carbon Trunk line works perfectly as its purpose is to gather CO2 from certain sites and ship it to “depleted” conventional oil fields and “undeplete” them.
CO2, or acid gas, pumped into the reservoir acts as a lubricant allowing production of significantly more oil.
Winning!!!
Robert,
NOAA estimates that there are 3 trillion (3,000,000,000,000) metric tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. There are 50 times as much in the oceans.
Carbon Capture? A cow’s flatulence in a hurricane.
“Haha! What is this article? I cannot even comment on all of the non sequiturs.”
Yes, a shining example.
So who is Mr Burgess Langshaw Power?:
Burgess is a former policy analyst currently completing his PhD in Global Governance at the Balsillie School – University of Waterloo.
FFS… know we have doctorates in Global Governance!!
Sadly, this gentleman will have a PhD and MSM will quote him as an expert. As ‘Climate believer’ indicated so many non sequiturs.
Will point out just one, the prime minister’s plan to plant 2 billion trees. The PM & PhD candidate failed to understand the 2 billion trees are immaterial in a country that has more than 320 billion trees. As well, if one was to believe the PM’s logic that each tree absorbs a minimum 23lbs CO2 per yr, Canada is a carbon sink
SITUATION ASSESSMENT:
It’s ALL a Marxist-Democrat scam – false enviro-hysteria including the Climate and Green-Energy frauds, the full-Gulag lockdown for Covid-19, paid-and-planned protests by Antifa and BLM, AND NOW the mail-in ballot US election scam – it’s all false.
We published that the Climate-and-Green-Energy scare was a false narrative in 2002, and by 2009 I wrote that there was a covert agenda, Now the radical greens are admitting that “Global Warming aka Climate Change and Green Energy” was false propaganda, a smokescreen for their Marxist objectives.
I called Covid-19 correctly on 21March2020 – NO LOCKDOWN! Covid-19 was a relatively mild flu except for the very elderly and infirm. Covid-19 is less dangerous than seasonal flu’s of recent decades that nobody remembers – the full-Gulag lockdown was not just a huge over-reaction, it was a WHO-led scam.
The UN, the WHO, the IMF and the World Economic Forum (WEF) are using the Covid-19 false crisis to reshape the global economy into their neo-Marxist model. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6pzXrEBqR0&feature=youtu.be
In October 2019, Event 201, sponsored by the WEF, the Bill Gates Fdn, etc. simulated a global coronavirus pandemic. https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about
Just months later a relatively mild Wuhan-lab-manufactured coronavirus flu was overblown into a false global pandemic, promoted by the WHO into an economy-destroying global lockdown.
The Covid-19 lockdown enabled the huge mail-in vote, where the Dems produced millions of false ballots. All the pieces of the puzzle were in place. In fact, Trump won by a landslide – the 2020 USA election was stolen by fraud.
The radical green objective is to destroy prosperity and move the USA to a planned economy – with a few rich at the top looking down on all the peasants – that describes most countries, and the USA is next if Biden wins.
We stand at the abyss. If Biden wins, it will be the end of freedom. Europe and Canada have already fallen far down that “poverty road to Venezuela”. If America falls, there will be nowhere left to run to.
Post Script:
Canada is finished, thoroughly corrupted by Trudeau and his team. Alberta has carried the entire country financially for generations through our oil wealth – a million dollars per Alberta family has been donated to the rest-of-Canada since 1961. The average Canadian is too innumerate and illiterate to understand what is happening to him – sheep to the slaughter…
Good news! Since March, nobody dies from old age anymore.
Actual deaths from Covid-19 are nowhere near 244,000; in fact Covid deaths are less than 30,000 in the USA.
Deaths attributed to Covid-19 include motorcycle accidents, heart attacks, cancers, drug overdoses, drive-by shootings, parachuting bounces, etc.
If the body is Covid-positive, even if they have no symptoms of respiratory distress, they are coded as Covid-19 deaths in the USA.
In fact Covid-19 is a relatively mild flu is really only dangerous to the elderly and infirm. The full Gulag lockdown for Covid-19 was one of the greatest and most costly scams in the history of the planet.
Well said, Allan. I’ too have noticed that death from old age has been banished. The success of the Atlantic Bubble is so profound that now everyone who lives in Atlantic Canada is immortal. Meanwhile, Alberta . where I live, has become a malarial swamp of disease and death. Nobody is telling Newfie jokes now, let me tell you.
In 2019, citizens in their eighties and nineties died without comment, as we then so heartless in our understanding of human mortality as to believe that death was a natural and inevitable phenomenon that no man could avoid forever. Not now. Eddie Shack died at age 82, and we weep that such a fine young man was cut off in the bloom of youth.
My email to the Alberta government today:
Today I received the following study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which states that school closures negatively impacted millions of children, and estimates that ~5.5 million years-of-life-lost (YLL) were caused by the closure of USA schools because of the Covid-19 lockdown.
[Excerpts]
“Summed across the population, an estimated 5.53 million (95% CI, 1.88-10.80) YLL may be associated with school closures. “
“Finally, to preserve intergenerational equity, the costs of future life years lost for young children today must be factored into decision-making regarding school openings and potential future closings. We believe that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has extracted an enormous sacrifice from its youngest citizens to protect the health of its oldest.”
Here in Alberta, the Covid-19 lockdown has cost at least 25,000 years-of-life-lost – that was the ~500 INCREASED opioid overdose deaths directly caused by the Covid-19 lockdown multiplied by ~50 years of remaining life. The average age of opioid deaths is ~30, and the average age of Covid-19 deaths in Alberta is ~82. The lockdown sacrificed hundreds of desperate young people and did not even save that many very-elderly-and-infirm.
I called it correctly on 21March2020 – NO LOCKDOWN! Covid-19 was a relatively mild flu except for the very elderly and infirm. Covid-19 is less dangerous to the general public than flu’s of recent decades that nobody remembers – the FULL lockdown was a huge over-reaction – at best, it was utter incompetence.
Sweden correctly did not impose the full lockdown and had low death rates and is now at or near herd immunity and DID NOT DESTROY ITS ECONOMY.
I am concerned with the wellbeing of the elderly, but I reject the current practice of harming the young to safeguard us old folks – we should maintain our distance and everyone else should get back to school and work.
The Covid-19 lockdown did enormous harm and little if any good – it was a total debacle – I told you so, eight months ago.
End this destructive lockdown now.
_____________________________________________________________
ESTIMATION OF US CHILDREN’S EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT AND YEARS OF LIFE LOST ASSOCIATED WITH PRIMARY SCHOOL CLOSURES DURING THE CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019 PANDEMIC November 12, 2020
Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH1; Wil Van Cleve, MD, MPH2; Frederick J. Zimmerman, PhD3
JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(11):e2028786. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.28786
https://jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?doi=10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.28786
Importance
United States primary school closures during the 2020 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affected millions of children, with little understanding of the potential health outcomes associated with educational disruption.
Objective
To estimate the potential years of life lost (YLL) associated with the COVID-19 pandemic conditioned on primary schools being closed or remaining open.
Design, Setting, and Participants
This decision analytical model estimated the association between school closures and reduced educational attainment and the association between reduced educational attainment and life expectancy using publicly available data sources, including data for 2020 from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US Social Security Administration, and the US Census Bureau. Direct COVID-19 mortality and potential increases in mortality that might have resulted if school opening led to increased transmission of COVID-19 were also estimated.
Main Outcomes and Measures Years of life lost.
Results
A total of 24.2 million children aged 5 to 11 years attended public schools that were closed during the 2020 pandemic, losing a median of 54 (interquartile range, 48-62.5) days of instruction. Missed instruction was associated with a mean loss of 0.31 (95% credible interval [CI], 0.10-0.65) years of final educational attainment for boys and 0.21 (95% CI, 0.06-0.46) years for girls. Summed across the population, an estimated 5.53 million (95% CI, 1.88-10.80) YLL may be associated with school closures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a total of 88 241 US deaths from COVID-19 through the end of May 2020, with an estimated 1.50 million (95% CI, 1.23-1.85 million) YLL as a result. Had schools remained open, 1.47 million (95% credible interval, 0.45-2.59) additional YLL could have been expected as a result, based on results of studies associating school closure with decreased pandemic spread. Comparing the full distributions of estimated YLL under both “schools open” and “schools closed” conditions, the analysis observed a 98.1% probability that school opening would have been associated with a lower total YLL than school closure.
Conclusions and Relevance
In this decision analytical model of years of life potentially lost under differing conditions of school closure, the analysis favored schools remaining open. Future decisions regarding school closures during the pandemic should consider the association between educational disruption and decreased expected lifespan and give greater weight to the potential outcomes of school closure on children’s health.
This is GIGO from the Balsillie School, all one way or another sponsored by the Rockefeller bros…. They had this guy at CIGI, the other Balsillie sponsored outfit, Thomas Homer-Dixon, writing in the Gleube and Mail, full of himself about climate change….
Propaganda tools.
Way back in 2002 the Globe and Mail asked me to re-publish our highly credible paper that stated that global warming was a false crisis and green energy would not solve the (non-)problem. I first declined, saying that the G&M was an alarmist rag that would then publish a specious rebuttal; the G&M promised that would not happen, so I published. Then Thomas Homer-Simpson and a dyslexic gang of Aussie mathematicians published the most specious nonsense rebuttal – it was utter drivel. Then the G&M refused to publish our response. My first assessment of the G&M was correct – it is a worthless alarmist rag, another media purveyor of false scares about global warming. “Be very frightened, dyslexic innumerates say we are all gonna die from global warming… in a cooling world.”
Allan, indeed.
BTW the Gleube -like the Ceeb- was pushing remdesivir big time… Let me guess: no investigation on the health can approval fiasco coming from these media…
And the CBC now has launched a concerted attack likely with NDP activists on Kenney’s government with leaks from meetings with the CMO…
Thank you Tom.
Repeating from my above email to the Alberta cabinet:
“Here in Alberta, the Covid-19 lockdown has cost at least 25,000 years-of-life-lost – that was the ~500 INCREASED opioid overdose deaths directly caused by the Covid-19 lockdown multiplied by ~50 years of remaining life. The average age of opioid deaths is ~30, and the average age of Covid-19 deaths in Alberta is ~82. The lockdown sacrificed hundreds of desperate young people and did not even save that many very-elderly-and-infirm.”
The lockdown was a costly debacle that killed hundreds of desperate young people and saved nobody. I cannot understand why our Chief Medical Officer cannot see the obvious. Young people were “thrown under the bus” by the lockdown, and we elderly are no safer. I published this correct call 8 months ago on 21March2020 and nothing has changed, except the death toll – in Alberta, twice the number of ~30-year olds have died from opioid OD’s than ~82-year old folks have died from Covid-19. Opioid deaths have doubled since the lockdown. The lockdown is not a war to save the old – it’s a war to destroy the young. It is dysfunctional and immoral.
Any responsible older person will choose to take careful risks to preserve the young – they are our future. We live on through our children and our grandchildren.
Edit to the above:
The Covid-19 lockdown is not a war to save the old – it’s a war that destroys the young. It is dysfunctional and immoral.
– Allan MacRae, B.A.Sc.,,M.Eng.
Canada.. SCARED of a bit of NATURAL warming.
SO DUMB !!!!!!!
They better hope the climate doesn’t decide to go the other way !
Yes, I liked the “trees will stop snow reflecting heat” concept. I should imagine many, if not most, Canadians being in favour of extra tree cover for 6+ months of the year after reading that.
Anyone in Toronto claiming it’s too warm?
https://www.earthcam.com/world/canada/toronto/cntower/?cam=cntower2
Fred, not all of are scared, many of us welcome it
But too many cidiots spoil the broth, its pretty amazing what people will believe.
Trudeau has lied and broken pretty much every promise made, but yes hes certainly going to fulfil this one.
“Lets form a committee”, usually a royal commission, report back in a decade.
My hope is this is how it will go, because we are already broke
The results of the committee deliberation have already been decided, even before the committee was convened.
Global Government Program hey?
They lust after that, these climate carpetbaggers, don’t they?
Canadians can do whatever they like. It will have no effect whatsoever on either the level of CO2 in the air or the temperature or the weather.
Yes
Exactly.
We can go to the point of preventing all of us 38 million from breathing and we don’t have instruments sensitive enough to measure a change
Canada’s boreal forest is a huge carbon sink that didn’t exist until after the last ice age, and if you believe climate alarmists, must be growing northwards with the melting permafrost at 75 km per decade. Canadians haven’t even factored that into their “net zero” calculations yet cuz they are apologetic about recently losing Arctic ice, not to mention losing the glaciers before that….
The bill is thin on details,
That Burgess , is because they have no intent of actually doing anything. How do you get to be a PhD candidate in Global Governance and not understand how politics actually works?
an independent 15-member advisory board. This is both a strength, in that it will hopefully include climate scientists
Might I inquire as to how a climate scientist would help reduce emissions? Isn’t their expertise in what the emissions do? Not in how to reduce them? I’m so confused.
Indigenous people and other expert stakeholders
I had no idea that being Indigenous makes one an expert!
Mods, please publish more from this author. Truly a fountain of ideas to be mocked in this one.
+100!
Plenty more articles of this “quality” at The Conversation -it’s a world leading echo chamber (dissenting comments are “disappeared” in the same manner as left,green blog sites) funded by the Australian taxpayers.
Not understanding how politics works is the RESULT of getting a degree in Global Governance. The education doesn’t cure it, it causes it.
In my experience, 15 member teams to have long boring meetings where everyone “gets their say” and nothing gets done. The work itself happens between meetings by individuals.
We used to have a politically incorrect saying in the USA during de Gaulle times. “Can 50 million Frenchmen be wrong?”. Sorry about that, but that is what was said. Blame the acoustics of hearing.
What a lot of distinction this drooling idiot has in his CV
Im glad to be just average if it saves me from spouting this nonsense
“I can assure you that we are already behind on tackling climate change and …”
Why do so many science illiterate people, such as the author, insist on using the phrase ‘tackling climate change’?
How does one tackle the climate exactly?
If you tackle climate in the end zone, you get a lock down…
Haha! Good one, Eric!
Indeed. Anyone who uses such phrases in seriousness should be sent back to kindergarten, so they can start their education all over again. Hopefully, at some point, they’ll realize that trying to “tackle (combat, etc)” climate change would require, at the VERY least, stopping the Earth from rotating on its axis, and revolving around the Sun.
Left Canada this year after 30 years. It was a tough decision, because it is a wonderful country with great people. My decision was greatly influenced by witnessing the hard-shift to the extreme left at all levels of the government and subsequent government policies stemming from it.
Too bad for Canada, but having said that, Canadians seem to be repeatedly re-electing the politicians which are taking them down the path towards harsher life, lowered standards of living and, above all, ever increasing draconian taxation to pay for ill-devised schemes like this one.
Spent my entire life running from the marxists and there seem to be fewer and fewer places to hide from them…
Huge marketing campaign in Aus at the moment to attract migrants to Canada.
I was born and raised in Canada. Left Canada 30 years ago. It was the best, luckiest, most prosperous decision I ever made in my life.
Canada wants Australians?
Whats that aboot? Theys plenty of Central Americans that are looking for somewhere new to go to.
People are people, right? Why waste money on advertising when you could profit $1,000 per head from the El Salvadorians, Nicaraguans, and others from just one country away.
Are those Canadians running the marketing campaign that racist, that they will actually pay for the good white ones when they could get the nearby brown ones at a profit?
I feel sorry for all the Canadian snowbirds this winter. I follow snowbird blogs and due to the lockdown many will be paying those heating bills in Canada.
A friend of mine is a snowbird, has a place in phoenix.
Due to covid he was not allowed to drive there.
Against the rules
Instead he drove and parked his car at my house, flew he and his wife to phoenix for $800, and i’m waiting for the car haul company he hired to come get it out of my driveway in calgary and haul it to phoenix for a couple K.
Instead of letting them drive it down for a couple hundred $ in gas.
So pointless and stupid
Activist administrations and their narcissistic eco-pop star leaders are sending their countries on a road to a world of hurt, by these pipe dream policies based on falsehood and wishful thinking detached from scientific and engineering reality. And for nothing.
Eco-radicalised citizen in future decades will be confronted by two facts:
– the promised clean green technologies have failed bringing hardship and economic ruin
– the prophecied warming of climate has not taken place
World’s Climate is a capricious beast: it can be warm in one place yet cold in another (I’m keeping this simple to match the level of the post), so trying to achieve a target ‘global average temperature’ (what a stoopid, stoopid metric – and let’s, for the sake of argument pretend it was possible) could as easily mean that Canada becomes a desert while Europe freezes: the target would be achieved but not in the way that Tread-water would be able to claim as any kind of achievement.
In any case, has the fool asked Canadians what kind of climate they would like? Has he come up with a costed menu of options? Does he know what the Canadian climate should be like? Of course not.
“Capturing and storing carbon is expensive, and in some cases outright ineffectual.”
Outright stupid would be more accurate.
not unless you use it to produce more oil, then it becomes the circle of life
“Not only do we need to meet these climate targets this time around — our international trade partners such as the EU and even China may see us as laggards…”
Yep, you can be sure that China (a 30% emitter), will call Canada (a 1% emitter) a climate laggard. China will then increase it’s emissions even further to produce more solar panels that it will sell to Canada to help them become better climate citizens during their long dark winters. The green climate zealots will then further praise China, but further ridicule Canada as emissions continue to rise. This will lead to the purchase of even more panels and so on …. The cycle ends when Canada becomes bankrupt and communism takes over, after which time the climate zealots will celebrate Canada as a good climate nation regardless of their emissions.
Wow! This is both funny and alarming. Our Canadian neighbors are allowing this type of nonsense? “who’s going to pay for it?” Nobody, and most certainly not the politicians that are in favor of it because it is the soup of the day. Where are Bob and Doug, the Mckenzie Brothers, when you need them?
Quote:
the darkness of leaves can absorb more incoming energy than the potentially lighter ground surface
Can someone please buy this sweet little muppet a Solar Power Meter. Maybe for Christmas?
I can appeal to my own authority here, I used to be A Muppet in this regard.
Funny old world innit………..
[I had to buy my own (proper) solar meter and have just fabricated my own solar data logger
(£50 from Lascar for an EL3 plus a solar cell from an old garden fairy light]
Finally, I can find something to agree with climate change “skeptics” on. CC&S is just a fig leaf to make coal and gas more acceptable. It’s much cheaper to invest in wind, solar, hydro, storage, and H. Gosh, even the money burning nuclear industry is a cheaper way of getting CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Have you computed the area required to get a 24 hour average of 1000 MW of electricity from solar panels? it’s about 15 square miles and that assumes no storage with all electricity going into the grid. Have you seen solar array installations in the eastern US? Vast areas of healthy forest cut down for lifeless solar panels. It’s a depressing sight. The trees are probably sold to the Germans who burn them, claiming no net CO2 emissions because the trees grow back, eventually. Except not where the trees have been replaced by solar panels.
I’m getting my piece of the pie on a new solar project here in AB
3300 acres, 465mw
Except, oops, AESO stats show solar provides about 20% over the year here in AB
So that 465mw is actually 93mw
And that is 5.2 square miles of lost farmland.
Good engineering boys
Except, there is no need to get CO2 out of the atmosphere. In fact, it would be better for plants, and indeed humans and all living things if there was more CO2. Investing in high-cost, unreliables like wind and solar is just dumb.
Well, I am truly amazed by this bidness.
It’s just that a few questions come to mind, such as:
1) are they going to block the geese and ducks from migrating south because the hundreds of thousands of wings flapping obviously have something to do with global warming;
2) has anyone really checked to see if those politicians have been infested with a certain convocation of politic worms;
3) they haven’t quite come to the edge of this political cliff, but how many polar bears could we persuade to round them up?
and 4) do ANY of these dimwits ever really go OUTSIDE for longer than five minutes?
No, climate and even weather frightens them.
Thank you, James!
We now know that the dodos never really became extinct. They became politicians and moved to cities.
Another wicked solution, to what is an unlikely problem, and may be a positive development. Progress: One step forward, two steps backwards.
I propose that concrete plants and other high carbon-spewing factories be fitted with carbon masks, which have been proven to work, the debate is over, so shuddup you anti-science carbon mask deniers.
Indeed, scientists say that if only they would have worn their carbon masks the global carbondemic nightmare could have been largely avoided. Furthermore, studies have shown that even when carbon masks are pulled down, as long as they remain attached and visible, they are still effective.
In conclusion, carbon masks are an inexpensive and easy solution to the carbondemic we are currently in. So, carbon-spewing plants, Wear. Your. Mask. Or else.
Fine, except Canada uses federal lands to manipulate U.S. lumber markets with their exports. Planting only partly covers this ongoing trade and market manipulation strategy.
Another committee of Liberal friends who need well paying jobs. A few more millions down the Liberal drain
Carbon capture is a joke. As fast as CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere, nature will put it right back in.
https://youtu.be/b1cGqL9y548?t=2906
The next Solyndra.
Everything the Marxists touch turns to crap eventually, even their hold on power. I’m too old to see the outcome of their “One World Governance” but will rest peacefully knowing it will end in failure as the Capitalistic systems they use to fuel their rise to power fold one by one and leave them with nothing to bribe the people with. People will rue the day they voted in Socialism to enact trickle up poverty. There will be a “Climate Change” migration as foretold by the Alarmist doomsayers but it will be from cold climates to warmer climates as energy costs and lack of availability spiral to the point that heat becomes a luxury affordable only by the elite.
Be reasonable, mark1 How else will the Canadians get jobs for their soy-boy GenZers when they have been taught zero skills?
These lot can try to sequester an essential life-cycle gas under their basements where they are living in the blue light zone.
Oh, BTW Tell them to hold their breaths.
MP Trudeau and his team have plenty of talk about “solving” “climate change” but have no plans at all for the distribution of a CV-19 vaccine.
Say what you will about vaccines, it’s considerably more important to have a plan for vaccine distribution than plan for some imaginary climate emergency.
Okay, take off, eh. Know how Canadian beer is 5 percent alcohol by volume? If Yanks are so smart, how come you’ve got inferior beer?
I do not understand this comment by Ian.
Is beer quality being equated to alcohol content?
Having a variation in both quality and alcohol and price is good. Yes?
Just in case:
https://affotd.com/2013/04/17/americas-10-most-alcoholic-beers/
Hello John. Yes, beer quality is directly proportional to alcohol content. The best beer is 100 percent alcohol by volume. Also the best beer is free. Duh.
Well, that describes everyone who legally agreed to that farce.
The countries that claim reductions towards their targets ignore the CO₂ they cause to be emitted in China, SE Asia, Korea, India, etc.
Having other countries emit CO₂ is not a true reduction. All that steel, aluminum, plastics, resins, manufacturing, assembly, mining, refining, welding, etc. etc. is a lot of CO₂ emissions.
Making it clear that China had a long term plan when they refused to reduce their CO₂. With the loser net-zero plan, many countries ill be in it too deep to recover by 2030.
Belonging to the tax paying class, the whole thing gives me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Trudeau’s ‘Covid Recovery Plan’ is just as vague.
The title needs correcting:
“Ottawa’s latest climate plan bets on expensive,
andunproven, and unnecessary carbon capture technologies”There, that’s better!
1. Since power plants in Denmark are burning wood, the climate crisis is over. No further action by anyone else in the world is required.
2. The reality is that based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Hence if Canada eliminated all of their CO2 emissions, doing so would have no effect on climate. It is all a matter of science.
3. The AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect in the Earth’s atmosphere caused by trace gases with LWIR absorption bands. Such a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, in the Earth’s atmosphere, or anywhere else in the solar system for that matter. The radiant greenhouse effect is hence science fiction so hence the AGW conjecture is science fiction as well. Officials in Canada need to understand this.
4. For those who still believe in a radiant greenhouse effect, it has to be dominated by H2O and not CO2. Molecule per molecule, H2O is a stronger IR absorber than is CO2 and on average there is 50 times more H2O in the Earth’s atmosphere than is CO2. Changes in CO2 will have no significant effect on the over all radiant greenhouse effect. Apparently Canada has no plans for lowering global H20 emissions and hence no plan to significantly change the overall radiant greenhouse effect, if it exists.
5. But even if we could somehow stop the Earth’s climate from changing, Extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue unabated because they are both part of the current climate. We do not even know what the optimum climate is let alone how to achieve it. Officials in Canada need to understand this.
6 The gas in the atmosphere that holds the most heat energy is N2 and not CO2 or even H2O. It is really the non-greenhouse gases that trap more heat energy in the Earth’s atmosphere because they are such poor IR radiators to space. N2 is also the one gas that is most responsible for the pressure at the Earth’s surface. The higher the atmosphere pressure the warmer will be the Earth’s surface. So if Canada really wants to cool the surface of the Earth significantly they need to find a way to significantly reduce N2 in the Earth’s atmosphere and so far they have no plans to do so.
7. Capturing CO2 by the use of more trees in Canada would be improved if the Canadian climate were warmer and the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere above Canada where higher than it is today.
In his article, Burgess Power omits the usual scientific misconceptions while attempting to discuss an expensive plan which will have no results.
**As a researcher who studies the governance of climate-altering technologies (such as carbon capture and storage), I can assure you that we are already behind on tackling climate change and catching up is going to be expensive. The government’s strategy will likely rely upon technology that isn’t viable in the way it hopes.**
**Canada has repeatedly failed to meet any of the climate targets it has set in place since 1992. This has left us further behind our Paris climate agreement targets and scrambling to catch up to meet our global commitments.**
Probably good news since we did not waste money there.
**Not only do we need to meet these climate targets this time around — our international trade partners such as the EU and even China may see us as laggards, further eroding our international credibility — we need to make up for lost time.**
China?? Really. A country that is not interested except for virtue signalling.
**As a researcher who studies the governance of climate-altering technologies (such as carbon capture and storage), I can assure you that we are already behind on tackling climate change and catching up is going to be expensive. The government’s strategy will likely rely upon technology that isn’t viable in the way it hopes.**
Behind on tackling climate change? Really?
Let’s step back and look at what you are really talking about. I wrote to all the MP’s questioning the emissions reduction and received NO responses. And I expect the same here as nobody wants to reply when they are wrong or cannot answer.
What you and the politicians are dealing with is Step Two – reducing emissions. But you have all FAILED to address Step One – Proof that emissions aka CO2 are actually causing any or a significant temperature change. I have scanned the literature and have not found ONE study which MEASURES the amount of temperature change caused by the so-called “greenhouse gases”. So by talking about reducing emissions, the politicians and scientists have in effect admitted failure and plan on misleading the public by cutting emissions which will have NO EFFECT. In addition there is NO method of MEASURING success so they will again fool the public and claim success if can cut some emissions or trade credits which is a real joke.
So, one of your projects of studying carbon capture is a circular argument which will accomplish nothing other than cost money which can be put to better use today. The Liberals, NDP, and Greens have no concept of responsible spending so we can expect those three to continue the wasteful spending.
**The focus of the federal government is on market-driven solutions, including technologies that remove carbon from the air or emissions and lock them away. But carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) are not silver bullets in the fight against climate change.**
Fight against climate change? Time to wake up and realize that you cannot fight Mother Nature. Mother will cool us off in due time and it is likely around the corner if you open your eyes.
**Canada is home to some of the most successful CCS projects and companies in the world, including the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, Boundary Dam and Carbon Engineering. However, these are expensive demonstration projects. Their use could be targeted to specific sectors (such as aluminium manufacturing), but they will never effectively reduce Canadians’ emissions at scale.**
Expensive and a waste of money.
**Capturing and storing carbon is expensive, and in some cases outright ineffectual. The United States government spent US$5 billion from 2010 to 2018 on the technology, but it would take additional significant investments, more research and some technological breakthroughs for the technology to lower the cost of capturing carbon to US$94-232 per tonne. This is staggering compared to Canada’s baseline carbon tax of $50 per tonne of emissions by 2022, and when factored into the already low price of Canadian oil, we are left with a most unhappy conclusion.**
Yes, you again made my point of expensive and useless.
**So how would Canada find the money to pay for expensive projects such as carbon capture and storage? As it stands, that cost will be passed to the taxpayer. Our current carbon tax circulates the money back into the economy.**
You and the politicians forgot to note that the administration of these circular funds also costs money and is a waste. It gives jobs to bureaucrats and costs the public.
**This is not to say that carbon-capture and storage or carbon dioxide removal technologies do not have a role to play in the future. Concrete produces four to eight per cent of global emissions, and mandating that all concrete facilities be fitted with carbon capturing technologies could reduce their emissions. While these are expensive, they may be necessary.**
Necessary? Why?
**The current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models rely on the deployment of significant amounts of carbon capture and storage in the latter part of the century to meet agreed-upon targets. To rely upon such technologies as a silver bullet for addressing Canadian climate policy, however, is flawed and doomed to fail.**
The model is doomed to fail as has already been shown. We are not warming as projected and NASA/NOAA is adjusting temperatures upward to fool the public that we are warming:
**When the government of Canada releases precise details for meeting the climate targets outlined in Bill C-12, it cannot rely upon carbon capture and storage or carbon dioxide removal if there is any hope in succeeding.**
Succeeding in what? They will not alter the temperature especially in Canada where we have less than 2 percent of emission. We will be leaders in fooling ourselves especially the gullible public.