Kyoto Accord

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“The world’s got a pretty simple choice here. It’s between George W. Bush and grandchildren.”
~ Bob Brown, Australian Senator, calling for a U.S. oil boycott because of George Bush’s refusal to sign the Kyoto climate change treaty.

What Is The Kyoto Accord?

The current Kyoto round calls for a greenhouse gas emission reduction of 6% in Canada and 5% in the USA.

Why Ratify The Kyoto Accord?

Long Term Ice Core Measurements of CO₂

Recent Scripps Institute Measurements of CO₂ At Mauna Loa, Hawaii

Measured in ppmv (parts per million by volume)

Global warming has already reduced the depth of the winter polar ice cap since the 1970s by 40% . Polar bears will become extinct if the ice retreat continues. 90% of all glaciers on the planet have retreated significantly in the last 50 years. As the white reflective snow melts, it leaves behind the darker earth which is even more efficient at absorbing solar energy. This causes an acceleration of the heating effect.

So what? Who likes snow and ice? Consider:

• The computer models show up to a metre sea level rise over the next 100 years, but they don’t account for the large icecaps that are above ground melting. Large parts of Florida, and much of the eastern US seaboard will be at risk if the Greenland icecap and the west Antarctic icecap melt.
• More heat means more energy in the atmosphere. This mean more turbulent weather. Super hurricanes will cause millions in property damage. We are already seeing more damage from tropical storms than ever before.
• More heat means a redistribution of rain patterns. We are now seeing freakish storms all over the world that dump many feet of water in a single day where previously even an inch would have been considered a major downpour. This also means droughts in places that previously had abundant rainfall. For the first time in history, Canada had to import grain because of droughts. For the first time in history, rainy Vancouver’s drinking water reservoirs were almost empty. The Monsoon rains, upon which Asian agriculture depends, no longer arrive with clock-like regularity. In 2004, we saw three hurricane right after each other in Florida: Charlie, Frances and Ivan.
• There have been two mass extinctions in earth history, the Permian, 230 million years ago, was the worst. 70% of all species were lost. It was caused by natural global warming when volcanoes released greenhouse gases. (The other more familiar to most people was the more recent KT Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction event, 65 million years ago. It was caused when an asteroid plunged into the earth at Chicxulub Mexico wiping out the dinosaurs and half of earth’s species.) We are re-experiencing the same global warming conditions that triggered the more devastating Permian extinction, only this time it is man made. When it gets too hot, plants die. When it gets too hot and dry, massive fires ravage huge areas. When plants die, insects and herbivores die. When insects die, even heat-resistant plant’s don’t get pollinated and die. Birds die without insects to eat. Carnivores die without herbivores to eat, all triggered by what seems so innocuous — heat. Similarly, in the oceans, when they get just a few degrees too warm, corals expel their symbiotic algae and die soon thereafter. When coral reefs die, the fish that live on them die, triggering extinction chains. Satellites can chart the loss of vegetation over the planet. A one degree rise in the Americian southwest has already completly wiped out the ponderosa forests. The problem is not just heat. A one degree rise in average temperature increases evaporation so that you need 10% more water just to break even. We are losing 4 species per hour, a rate on the same scale as the Permian and KT events. Man has no ability to live without the support of other species. We are committing suicide and killing the family of life on earth along with us.

Computer models show we can expect a five degree centigrade (nine degrees Fahrenheit) increase in average temperature within 100 years. This is far from the worst case scenario. (The worst case is a runaway greenhouse effect.) Five degrees does not sound like much, however, consider that the earth is a mere five degrees warmer on average than it was during the last ice age. Another way of looking at it is that a five degree warming represents a change equivalent to moving from San Francisco (average temp 12.5c/54.5f) to Los Angeles (average temp 17.5c/63.5f), or from Los Angeles to San Antonio Texas (average temperature 22c/72f).

Well so what? Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a warmer climate? There are at least three drawbacks:

1. You may find you have to run your air conditioner year round. Where are we going to get all the extra electricity to run the air conditioners? By the law of supply and demand, electricity prices will go through the roof, and you may find yourself unable to afford to run your air conditioner.
2. With higher temperatures, water evaporates more quickly. Global warming disrupts rainfall patterns bringing extra rain to some places and drought to others. For those in drought, tap water will have to be brought in from further and further away. This means higher water bills. It also means skyrocketing food costs since the farmers need huge amounts of water for irrigation. Every degree rise requires 10% more water just to break even.
3. If you live in Alberta or Saskatchewan or in the Ganges river valley, your tap water comes from glacier meltwater. Those regions will experience summer water shortages.
4. The trees can’t pack up and move to a cooler climate. We lost many of our grand fir trees in the summer of 2002 due to heat and drought. You would pretty well have to cut them down and replant with new heat-tolerant, drought-tolerant species. It will take a generation for the newly planted forests to mature.

Measuring Temperature

Earth’s average temperature from 1000 CE to 2100 CE.

The red line shows the average temperature of the earth over the last 1000 years. The grey vertical line represents the year 2000. You notice the red line is pretty flat then suddenly starts to take off matching the curve of greenhouse gas production that came along with global industrialisation. The last part is an extrapolation based on computer models. There are several lines, outcomes dependent on how lackadaisical we are about global warming.

You might wonder how scientists can possibly know the average temperature going back 1000 years. There are many sources of information that can be used to cross check each other including ice cores, chemical analysis of carbon isotopes, tree rings of 1000 year old trees, plant remains in silt layered deposits and of course civil records.

Who Are the Global Warming Culprits?

The United States pumps out more CO₂ than the entire rest of the world combined. We as a species pump as much CO₂ into the air each year as you would get from burning down every tree in Canada each year.

Each person on earth breathes out about 0.85 kg (1.87 pounds) of CO₂ each day.

Transportation accounts for 40% of the problem. The number of cars is growing world wide ten times faster than the population. Every US gallon of gasoline burned produces 9 kg (20 pounds) of CO₂. It would take a large tree about a year to absorb this much CO₂. One reader was skeptical the CO₂ produced could weigh more than the gasoline. Recall your high school chemistry. When gasoline (an octane/hexane mix) burns each carbon atom (atomic weight 12) joins with an oxygen molecule containing two oxygen atoms (atomic weight 16) from the air. The oxygen forms 73% of the weight of the resulting CO₂.

“We’re about a degree Fahrenheit in the planet warmer than we were a century ago, but the vast majority of those who know something about it believe that at least half of that in the last 30-40 years is due to our using the atmosphere as an un-priced sewer to dump our tailpipe and our smokestack wastes. And every time we try to talk about getting a tax on those emissions, they tell us it’s an interference in the free market, as if, somehow, we should get our garbage collected for free.”
~ Dr. Stephen Schneider, professor of biological science at Stanford University, editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather

Opposition to Kyoto

Klein imagines that the Kyoto treaty will be costly to the oil interests in his province. He reasons, if we reduce emissions, we necessarily will necessarily consume less oil, therefore Alberta will sell less oil, therefore Alberta will make less money. Therefore, Kyoto must but stopped, the planet be damned.

I think Klein has it backwards. The way to reduce emissions is by using more efficient cars and machines that use less oil. This means the oil reserves will last longer. This means the oil producers can continue to collect money for a longer time. The oil monopolies will be able to raise oil prices, knowing that their customers now have more money in their pockets from using more efficient vehicles. Yet it won’t cost any more to produce the oil than now. Overall then, the oil producer would get more money for the same amount of oil in his reserves.

Though the vast majority of the world’s scientists are on board for cleaning up the atmosphere, a few can be bribed to lie or mislead the public. TV, in an attempt at balance, tries to some one anti-Kyoto expert for every one pro, even though scientists are about 1000 to 1 in favour of Kyoto.

Industry similarly screamed at the acid rain restrictions. Yet it turned out the acid captured in the smokestacks more than paid for the equipment to collect it. This same pattern has repeated itself over and over. Capturing and reusing a pollutant, or avoiding creating it in the first place always turns out to be “unexpectedly” profitable.

We don’t let children play with life support systems in hospitals, yet we allow alcoholic dufuses to meddle with the life support systems of spaceship earth. The politicians don’t understand the science needed to deal with global warming.

Others pooh-poohing global warming, quote president Bush, the man famous for lying about Iraq, 9/11, his military career and just about everything else.

Others quote Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, who does not even have a BSc. See what scientists in the field have to say about this quack.

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
~ Mark Twain

The oil industry has gone so far as to found it own support group to attempt to refute such charges, and extraordinarily well-funded lobby called the GCC Global Climate Coalition, which initially included all the biggest oil, coal and auto companies. They spent $60 million on disinformation to oppose attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They of course were all strong Bush supporters. Bush lied to the people during his campaign that he was going to reduce CO₂ emissions, then pushed through bills to increase them, such as the SUV tax subsidy. Many of their members have since seen the light and have abandoned the coalition. These include BP, Shell, Ford, DaimlerCrysler, Texaco, Southern Company and General Motors. There’s no point in fighting reality. You will make more money working with it. Even Bush and FOX’s Bill O’Reilly now admit the threat of global warming is real.

“Global warming is here. All these idiots that run around and say it isn’t here. That’s ridiculous.”
~ Bill O’Reilly

“I have said consistently that global warming is a serious problem.”
~ George W. Bush, 2006-06-26

“California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on global warming. International partnerships are needed in the fight against global warming.”
~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

“The environmental and economic consequences of climate change and our dependency on fossil fuels compel both California and the United Kingdom to commit to urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote low-carbon technologies.”
~ Tony Blair

“Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It’s time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth’s climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.”
~ Naomi Oreskes, 2004-12-26

“If you compressed the atmosphere to a liquid, it would be about 1/500 the size of the oceans. It is not nearly as big as people assume.”
~ Tim Flannery, 2006-09-09

According to an article in Mother Jones, 2005-05/06 by Chris Mooney, from 2000 to 2003, Exxon funneled more than $8 million into a network of think tanks, quasi-journalistic media outlets, and civic and religious groups, to great effect. Peer-reviewed scientific journals contain virtually nothing that challenges the consensus on anthropogenic global warming.

Those who have a financial investment is playing ostrich, carefully avoid reading any of the thousands of books written by reputable scientists.

Doubt

As you might guess, I think those claiming doubt about climate change are a bunch of paid shills without conscience. But let us give them the benefit of the doubt. If there is doubt about climate change, what is the prudent thing to do?

Buckminster Fuller explained that our planet can be considered a spaceship, with a life support system — the atmosphere. If you shank the earth to the size of a basketball, the atmosphere would be about as thick as a layer of saran wrap. In other words, it is fragile.

One does not jerk around doing experiments to a spaceship’s life support system. That is precisely what business wants us to do — insert massive quantities of novel chemicals into the atmosphere. We are sure the effects won’t be beneficial. The only doubt is whether they will be mildly or violently harmful.

Look for yourself at these data about tornado frequency: 1955-2000 and 2003-2006. Global warming predicts more violent weather, simply because there in more energy in the atmosphere. You can see the clear trend to increasing tornado frequency for yourself.

Exxon has been funding the deniers, liars and fudsters. The fools an Exxon don’t even recognise their own self interest. The longer oil lasts, the more money they will make.

Goldilocks

The catch is we have overwhelmed the natural systems. Every 300 horsepower car acts like 300 straining horses converting oxygen to CO₂. Every household appliance is like some Tazmanian Devil on cocaine. Every light bulb is like several marathon runners gasping. A furnace is the equivalent of 14 elephants rutting away in the basement. Every time you take a shower, it is the equivalent of 10 horses thrashing away to warm the water up with friction. It takes a large tree about a year to absorb the CO₂ from burning even one gallon of gasoline.

CO₂ forms only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere — about 375 parts per million. How could this insignificant gas make any difference to climate? The importance of CO₂ in planetary heat regulation was discovered back in the 1800s. Even at tiny concentrations, CO₂ is remarkably efficient at absorbing and hence trapping energy. Each CO₂ molecule is a bit like tiny solar-powered transformer, absorbing light and converting it to heat and emitting it, repeating the cycle over and over many times a second. It is that same ability that makes CO₂ useful in constructing infrared lasers.

With no CO₂ at all, the earth’s average temperature would be -20°C (-4°F). With 375 parts per million, the current concentation, it is 14°C (57°F). The level is rising about 2.54 parts per million per year and is accelerating, mainly due to the unchecked emissions in the USA. Scientists are concerned even a 3°C (5°F) rise would cause mass extinctions. Some projections calculate a 6°C (11°F) rise if we don’t quickly mend our ways. If CO₂ ever reached 1% of the atmosphere, the average temperature would be above boiling. Higher concentrations that than would sent it up to -500°C (-868°F), like the surface of Venus.

To summarise, CO₂ acts as the planetary thermostat. Too little and we freeze, too much as we boil. We need to keep it just right. To add to the complication, CO₂ is just one of many even more potent greenhouse gases, though it is the most important one.

The Soda Pop Effect

“What if we run into a tipping point where we have this kind of accelerated scenario of climate change? We’re gonna get our butts kicked.”
~ Paul Roberts, The End of Oil

1. As the oceans warm, they can hold less CO₂ (carbon dioxide). It bubbles into the atmosphere, like warmed soda pop. The carbon dioxide is a green house gas that heats the oceans further in a vicious circle.
2. The arctic is where the global warming effects are most dramatic (2.6 times stronger). Permafrost is melting letting the frozen methane into the atmosphere. Methane is 50 times more potent as a greenhouse gas. That further melts the permafrost in a vicious circle. According to a Nova documentary, for every human on earth there are 3/4 of a ton of termites. There is a population explosion of termites caused by the rapid clearing of tropical rainforests and drought deaths of the tropical forests caused by global warming. Termites produce substantial quantities methane as a byproduct of their digestion of cellulose. Scientists say that the most obvious sign of life on earth from a distant observer would be the high concentrations of methane in our atmosphere, caused primarily by the flatulence of cows, a side effect the cattle feed lot industry. More termites means more methane which means more global warming.

   “We have a lot of carbon stored in the permafrost, and those permafrosts are starting to defrost and when they defrost that carbon is going to be oxidized to carbon dioxide or brought out as methane… and that will be a dramatic increase in greenhouse gases.”
   ~ Douglas Crawford-Brown, Director, Carolina Environmental Program, UNC-Chapel Hill

3. Snow cover in the subarctic reflects heat back out to space. Global warming causes the snow to melt earlier, and it stays melted a longer period each year. The dark ground or water underneath absorbs heat. Snow reflects 80 to 90% of the light, but water only reflects 5 to 10%. Technically reflectivity is referred to as albedo. So again you get a vicious warming cycle.
4. Greenland’s glaciers, due to global warming are melting rapidly. This dumps huge quantities of fresh water into the North Atlantic, diluting the salinity. According to some computer models this might be enough to interface with the Gulf Stream which what makes Europe habitable. So ironically general global warming can cause local cooling, just as a flame in a propane powered refrigerator can cool food.
5. CO₂ warms the air. This makes it hold more water vapour, which is itself a greenhouse gas. So you get a vicious circle magnifying effect.
6. Methyl clathrates are frozen methane, lying buried on the continental shelves. As the oceans warm, these melt and burp methane, a greenhouse gas 60 times more potent into the air. In a vicious circle this causes more warming.
7. As the oceans become more acidic, creatures with shells (e.g. corals, clams, oysters and diatoms) are unable to extract calcium carbonate from the ocean. Their shells dissolve like teeth in Cocoa-Cola. This means they are unable to fix carbon. The acidity also means the oceans have less ability to dissolve CO₂. More CO₂ means more acidity. More acidity means more CO₂. More CO₂ means more global warming.
8. As the oceans become warmer, plankton (tiny ocean plants) die off. About half the plankton has already died. Lowly plankton do the lion’s share of the work converting CO₂ to oxygen. Fewer plankton means more CO₂ which means more global warming. Since plankton are the base of the marine food pyramid, one additional symptom of the plankton die-off is reduced fish populations.
9. Due to global warming, the Amazon has seen its first droughts ever. This leads to forest fires. The plants there have never seen fire, and are not adapted to it. Each fire leaves the forest even more vulnerable to the next fire. The soils are thin and quickly erode away. The burning emits massive amounts of CO₂, and the Amazon, the lungs of planet earth, no longer has the biomass to convert CO₂ back to oxygen that sustains the planet’s animal life (including us). Similar problems are happening all over the globe. Fewer plants means more CO₂ which means more global warming.
10. Global warming means:
    • extreme droughts
    • extreme flooding for a short periods
    • high winds
    When plants experience heat above what they are adapted to, they shut down. They stop converting CO₂ to oxygen. Ditto for drought. Flooding rips up the soil and carries it off into the ocean, leaving poor gritty soils behind. Fewer plants means more CO₂ which means more global warming.

The End Of Oil

“We’re going to run out of air to burn before we run out of fossil fuels to burn.”
~ Richard Manning, Against the Grain

The problem is we are hopelessly dependent on oil for energy, chemicals, fertilizers, pumping water, making electricity etc. We have done almost nothing to prepare for the end of oil. Corporations are incapable of looking ahead more than a quarter or two, so that have not funded any research but window dressing. Government has been unwilling to fund research since campaign-contributing oil companies want the world to remain addicted to their products.

“Petrochemicals, fossil fuels, have become embedded in our food supply. If we run out of fossil fuel, that strategy will collapse in a heartbeat.”
~ Richard Manning, Against the Grain

“Our global population is going to be reduced.”
~ William Catton, Jr., Professor Emeritus, Sociology & Human Ecology, Washington State University

“Rational people will go quietly and meekly into a gas chamber if only you allow them to believe it’s a bathroom.”
~ Zygmunt Bauman

“There is no need to save the planet. It will be here a million years from now no matter what we do. We are really talking about saving humanity.”
~ Patrick Moore

Denial

“If you have a sick child and 98 doctors say she needs medication and two say she does not, I go with the 98 doctors.”
~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

• Reducing CO₂ emissions will mean making changes — switching to new forms of energy. Americans don’t want to be bothered. They don’t want to deal with the expense.
• There are a few scoundrels, mostly funded by coal and oil interests, who lie and dissemble to give the impression there still doubt that something has to be done now. According to Ross Gelbspan of the Boston Globe, in 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal industry had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were public dissenters on global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more than $13 million since 1998 on an anti-global warming public relations and lobbying campaign. For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the news media to accord the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations.

  To gain an understanding of the level of scientific consensus on climate change, a recent study by Naomi Orestes examined every article on climate change published in peer-reviewed scientific journals over a 10-year period. Of the 928 articles on climate change the authors found, not one of them disagreed with the consensus position that climate change is happening or is human-induced.

  These findings contrast dramatically with the popular media’s reporting on climate change. One recent study analyzed coverage of climate change in four influential American newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and Wall Street Journal) over a 14-year period. It found that more than half of the articles discussing climate change gave equal weight to the scientifically discredited views of the skeptics.

• Some dismiss any bad news as gloom and doom, and hence invalid. This is not a very good way to test the truth of an assertion. When the climatologists tell you a tornado is coming, you trust them and get out the way, even though this is very gloomy news that your house may be destroyed. When they tell you global warming is coming more gradually, you suddenly lose faith just because the news is too unpleasant? Playing ostrich won’t help.

The Business Opportunity in Kyoto

If vehicles were more fuel efficient, oil companies could charge the same as they do now, yet pump less oil. This would increase their profits and also make the reserves last longer. Instead, the fools lobby for fuel-inefficient vehicles.

Other businesses besides oil also have much to gain from Kyoto. More efficient use of energy always means higher profit in the long run, simply because it means reduced energy costs.

As the oil reserves are consumed, by the law of supply and demand, the prices of oil will rise. Black gold will go platinum. So irrespective of global warming, the world is going to be forced to switch to energy-efficient machines and vehicles.

We Canadians must decide whether we want to be the providers or merely the purchasers of that high-efficiency, low-emission technology. The sooner we adopt the new technology ourselves, the more likely we will become the providers to the world.

Sharp and the Japanese government are already tiling the roofs of Japan with solar panels. With that experience they believe they will soon develop a solution at less that $1 per watt that will be cheaper than hydro electric or coal/oil-fired electricity and the Japanese will rapidly dominate the global energy market. Does it make sense to hand this giant market to the Japanese on a plate by playing ostrich and pretending we can do oil business as-usual forever?

Economics Of Clean

“Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value.”
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller

“A 3 mpg increase in the auto and light truck fleet is worth a million barrels of oil a day.”
~ Ernest Moniz, Professor of Physics, [The giant tar sands of Canada, the last major untapped oil source, are projected to produce 3 million barrels of oil a day.]

Nicholas Stern, who heads Britain’s Government Economic Service and formerly served as the World Bank’s chief economist produced a report for the British Government on the economics of dealing with global climate change, pointing out the stupendous costs of ignoring the problem.

“Failing to curb the impact of climate change could damage the global economy on the scale of the Great Depression or the world wars by spawning environmental devastation that could cost 5 to 20 percent of the world’s annual gross domestic product.”
~ Nicholas Stern

Kyoto Is Just A Start

“The best evidence indicates that we need to reduce our CO₂ emissions by 70 per cent by 2050. [Kyoto round one aims for only 6%]. If you own a four-while drive, and replace it with a hybrid fuel car, you can achieve a cut of that magnitude in a day, rather than half a century. If your electricity provider offers a green option, for the cost of a daily cup of coffee, you will be able to make equally major cuts in your household emissions. And if you vote for a politician who has a deep commitment to reducing CO₂ emissions, you might change the world.”
Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers

So the 6% reduction is just a start, not sufficient to rectify the problem. You have to start somewhere. The worst polluters, e.g. Canada and the USA are scheduled first. The lesser ones such as China are scheduled to follow later.

The problem is we have already pumped so big an excess of CO₂ into to atmosphere, even if in 2004 we took the entire world back below 2004 levels of emission, there would still be four times as much CO₂ as there was before the industrial revolution. We are pumping far greater amounts into the air than the natural systems, (trees, oceans, plant) can deal with. The natural systems can cope only with the natural sources (animals breathing, volcanoes), not with our overload.

“It might take another 30 Kyotos over the next century to cut global warming down to size.”
~ Jerry Mahlman, director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton

Is Kyoto Practical?

Canada is committed to reducing emission rates to 6% below what they were in 1990, which is 20% below the 2002 level, and 35% below the projected 2010 business-as-usual level.

Even so, Kyoto is just a token start at the problem. The economic effects of the 6% reduction would barely be noticeable since the positive economic aspects of the cleanup would offset the negative. Economic factors like interest rates, exchange rates, wars and tariffs would dwarf the Kyoto effects.

For home appliances (e.g. refrigerators and washing machines) we already have the technology to cut the energy consumption in half. All it requires is gradually phasing them in. For automobiles we already have high efficiency vehicles. All we have to do is provide incentives to both manufacture and buy them, and disincentives to both manufacture and buy inefficient SUVs.

An area 100 by 100 miles in New Mexico covered with solar panels could provide all the energy needs of the USA. We need to create only a very few new clean energy plants to meet the 6% target.

Ratifiers

Under George Herbert Walker Bush, the USA signed the Kyoto treaty on 1992-12-06. It ratified it in 1992-10-15. It came into effect on 1994-03-21. Under George Walker Bush, the USA reneged on the agreement in 2001.

There are only three other countries refusing to ratify the treaty: Australia, Monaco and Liechtenstein.

America’s excuse is that India and China should go first. Well, they have gone first. They have already ratified the agreement. The agreement was that Canada and the USA would develop the high technology required, field test it, then sell it to India and China.

The Greed Argument

When you work to reduce your energy and greenhouse gas footprint, you save money. Electricity costs about $0.10 USD a kilowatt hour. If you left a 100 watt bulb on for a month, it would consume 100 * 24 * 30 = 72,000 watt-hours or 72 kilowatt-hours. That would cost $7.20 USD . If you replaced that bulb with a 13 watt fluorescent, which is even brighter, it would cost only $0.94 USD a month. This does not sound like much, but add up all the lighting in your house. Similarly consider other energy hogs like ovens (5000 watts), clothes dryer (5000 watts), water heater (3800 watts), microwave (1500 watts), toaster (1500 watts), fridge (200 to 700 watts), desktop computer with CRT Monitor (330 watts), TV (90 watts), LCD flat panel TV (40 watts). Anything you can do to replace these with more energy efficient devices, or turn them off then not in use will save you money. That computer’s power running 24/7 will cost you $23.76 USD a month. If you turned on the hibernation feature, and you used the computer four hours a day, that bill would drop to 1/6 as much — $3.96 USD . To get an idea of what these devices are costing you, try out this energy calculator. You can cut your hot water bill by 40% by using a hot water heater that prewarms the water from heat in your outgoing wastewater. Similarly, you can save on your heating bill by warming incoming ventilation air with outgoing exhaust air.

Eat Locally

Ostrich vs Cassandra

Sometimes they will make up childish objections, even though they know they have only a primary school understanding of science and no inkling of how the scientists came to their conclusions. They pretend to themselves that they noticed some anomaly that all the scientists of the world missed, that if exposed, would triumph over all other knowledge about global warming. Walter Mittys all!

Global warming deniers like to dismiss all scientists as Jeremiahs or Cassandras. Consider that Cassandra of Greek mythology, famous for her dire predictions, was always right. Her curse was that no one would take action to avoid the catastrophes, despite her track record.

If I predict that placing your hands across a 10,000 volt AC line will kill you, it does not make me wrong just because my prediction is dire. If a doctor tells you that you have lung cancer and likely won’t last the year, it does not make him wrong, just because that is the last thing you wanted to hear. You can always find some quack who will sell you snake oil at inflated prices and tell you that everything will be fine, but that does not make him right.

Similarly you should not believe someone just because they predict dire consequences. That, in and of itself, means nothing. The church has been using that trick for centuries to manipulate people and extort them out of “contributions”, given in the hope of mollifying the vengeful, angry, control-freak god du jour.

In summary, it is childish to evaluate the correctness of a scientific prediction based on how pleasant the expected outcome.

What You can Do

• “If every American consumer brought their own reusable bags when shopping, we’ll cut more than a billion pounds of CO₂ this month — that’s the equivalent of taking 1.3 million cars off the road!”
  Rebecca Young, care2.org

  Reusable bags are sturdier, bigger and more easier to carry than plastic or paper bags. My sister made me a big sturdy one of canvas with rainbow handles. If you buy a 24-roll package of Cascades recycled toilet paper, they bundle a reusable bag to carry it home in. Most organic grocery stores will sell you a hemp/canvas sack, nicely decorated. Some cities are outlawing plastic bags, and some are insisting on reusable bags. Perhaps your city should follow suit.
• Replace your CRT with a flat screen LCD monitor.
• Turn off your computer and anything else when you are not using them.
• Replace your light bulbs with fluorescents.
• Defrag your hard disk regularly. In relation to energy use, these savings equate to just under 19 million tonnes of CO2 per year worldwide. Purely through regular defragmentation, a CO2 saving could be achieved each year equivalent to getting rid of 7 million automobiles.
• Install solar hot water heating
• Get your house properly insulated.
• Install double pane glass.
• Look into more efficient heating such as heat pumps, geothermal, prewarming incoming ventilation air with outgoing.
• get a smaller more fuel efficient car.
• use public transport more.
• Use a bicycle or other human-powered transport.
• If you need an SUV, rent one for your vacation rather than using it as your year-round commuter vehicle.
• Repair any leaking plumbing.
• Make sure all your hot water pipes are properly insulated.
• Install a flow-restricting shower head.
• Use a bath or shower whichever uses less water for the length of time you like to soak.
• When buying appliances and electronics, look for energy efficient ones.
• Maximise the use of natural light by synchronising your wake-sleep cycle closer to the sun.

Personal Travel

CO2 emission per PKT

So when you have a choice, pick bus or rail and avoid trucks and airplanes. Though not shown on this graph, helicopters are even worse than planes and SUVs are a type of light truck.

“Less than 10% of the fuel energy burned in automobiles is translated into forward motion of the vehicle, and even then most of this energy is needed to move the vehicle itself, which typically weighs 20 times more than its passengers.”
~ David Suzuki Foundation 2002-09

Lobby For Kyoto

“We would have to pull every truck and car off the street, shut down every train and ground every plane to reach the Kyoto target. Or we could shut off all the lights in Canada tomorrow.”
~ Rona Ambrose, Canada’s Environment Minister

The new Conservative government is dedicated to making global warming worse. They have pulled the website and the environment minister and the Prime Minister have been spreading FUD and outright lies about global warming. It is imperative they be removed form office quickly by hook or by crook, using all means fair and foul. It is also important to let them know you are doing that. They might change their tune.

“Stephen Harper is 300 pounds of condemned beef.”
~ Mary Walsh

Make a simple threat. “If you don’t get behind Kyoto, I will vote for someone who will.”

• You can write the Canadian Environment Minister, the porker John Baird, at bairdj@parl.gc.ca or the American Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. Write or email your Member of the federal Canadian Parliament or any other Member of Parliament or
  Stephen Harper (I can’t bear to call that homophobic bigot and Bush asskisser the Prime Minister).
  Office of the Prime Minister
  80 Wellington Street
  Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  K1A 0A2
  Fax: (613) 941-6900
  It is best to hand write your letter. However in a pinch you can email:pm@pm.gc.ca No postage is required to send a letter to any Member of Parliament. Only mail sent to the House of Commons in Ottawa (that is, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6) is eligible. Just write the letters O.H.M.S. where you would normally put a stamp.
• You could also try writing American politicians such as the president. I suggest focusing on why Kyoto is in the best interests of American oil companies and big American business given that Bush and his cabinet are mostly ex-oil executives. Bush has stated he will not ratify the Kyoto treaty. Write your American federal Senator, Member of the House of Representatives or
  President George W. Bush
  The White House
  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
  Washington, DC 20500 USA
  It is best to hand write your letter. However in a pinch you can email:president@whitehouse.gov
• Write or email your Member of the UK Parliament
  Tony Blair
  Office of the Prime Minister
  10 Downing Street
  London, UK SW1A 2AA
  Fax: 020 7925 0918

  No postage is required to send a letter to any Member of Parliament. Only mail sent to the House of Commons is eligible. Just write the letters O.H.M.S. where you would normally put a stamp.

“Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to global nuclear war.”
~ Environment Canada (The Canadian equivalent of the EPA)

Videos

• BBC video Climate Chaos: Bush’s Climate of Fear. Details how the Bush administration intimidated and gagged scientists to suppress information about global warming. To view the video, click the icon then the button in the upper right.
• 11 hours of global warming DVDs, including part 1 and 2 of David Attenborough’s The Truth About Global Warming and Bush’s Climate of Fear.
• Who killed the electric car.
• An Inconvenient Truth. Billed as “the most terrifying movie you will ever see”. Movie about global warmning narrated by Al Gore. See trailer: companion book. 100 Scientists OK Gore’s movie for accuracy. Bittorrent 782MB .
• End Of Suburbia

DVDs

	recommend DVD⇒The End Of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream
	DVD
	by: EndOfSuburbia.com
About peak oil and the effect the end of cheap energy will have on suburbia. We simply won’t be able to use cars to live in suburbia. We won’t be able to afford to heat McHomes. We won’t be able to afford to transport the ingredients 3000 miles for a Caesar salad. We won’t be able to afford the gas to travel to barn stores like Wal-Mart, and they won’t be able to afford to transport goods all the way from China. We will have to start learning to make everything including food and energy locally. There is no point in building more gas-fired electric plants. We don’t have enough gas flow to drive them. The movie points out that even if nuclear (expensive), coal (dirty), hydro (none left to exploit), wind, solar, biomass etc. were all implemented in a crash program starting today, they would come nowhere near producing enough energy for our current energy-wasteful lifestyle. Hydrogen is not a fuel; it is just a way of transporting energy cleanly. You need electricity or natural gas to create it. No matter what, our energy-guzzling lifestyle will end no matter how much we whine and stamp our feet that it couldn’t or shouldn’t happen. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t fair. Nature and history don’t care. We will have to do more with less energy. We have absolutely no choice but to rethink our energy priorities, to cut back, to conserve, and to create more efficient ways to use energy. The people behind the film are in interesting assortment including: Matthew Simmons, CEO of the world’s largest Energy Investment Bank, Simmons & Co. International, member of Cheney’s energy task force. Colin Campbell, author of The Coming Oil Crisis, Trustee for the Petroleum Institute of London. Former geologist for Oxford University, Texaco, British Petroleum and Amoco. Former senior executive for Shenendoah Oil, Amoco, Fina and the Nordic American Oil Companies.
amazon.ca amazon.com chapters.indigo.ca powells.com amazon.fr barnesandnoble.com amazon.de amazon.co.uk

Books

	recommend book⇒Junk Science: How Politicians, Corporations, And Other Hucksters Betray Us
		hardcover
	ISBN10:	0-312-35241-7
	ISBN13:	978-0-312-35241-7
	publisher:	Thomas Dunne
	published:	2006-10-03
	by:	Dan Agin
Dan Agin has a Ph.D. in biological psychology and thirty years of laboratory research experience in neurobiology. He is Associate Professor Emeritus of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago, and editor in chief of the on-line journal ScienceWeek. He explains how business, government, neocons and organisations twist scientific data for various nefarious purposes. He tackles a wide range of subjects besides global warming: genetically modified foods aging tobacco companies chiropractics health care talk therapy pollution warfare global warming religion embryos cloning genes behavior race
amazon.ca amazon.com chapters.indigo.ca powells.com amazon.fr barnesandnoble.com amazon.de amazon.co.uk

	recommend book⇒The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl
		paperback
	ISBN10:	1-55963-784-6
	ISBN13:	978-1-55963-784-8
	publisher:	Island Press
	published:	2001-01
	by:	Peter Calthorpe
Oil is not like a gas tank where the gas flows just fine down to the last drop. The older a well is, the harder it is to suck oil out of it, and the heavier and lower quality the oil is. It costs progressively more over time to refine the oil and push it out with steam or natural gas. So the world supply of oil won’t just suddenly end one day. It will gradually peter out following a bell-shaped curve similar to the production curve of an individual well. We are at about the peak now. Experts disagree when the precise peak was or will be, but is somewhere in the vicinity 2000 to 2013. The big problem predicting the precise point is that we don’t have accurate estimates of oil reserves. There are economic reasons for oil companies both the over and understate their reserves. Further, the precise timing of the peak depends on high prices depressing demand, wars disrupting production, and economic pressure to pump existing wells even faster. The shit hits the fan long before oil runs out completely. Our economy is based on increasing the supply of energy by 3% a year. The flow of oil will be decreasing instead, causing oil prices to skyrocket from the shortfall. We have to adjust to that. The way we operate now, the economy is totally dependent on cheap energy. A power blackout hitting all of eastern Canada and the USA in 2003 was at 4:13 PM on an unusually hot summer day. The problem was overload, with commercial, residential and industrial loads all high, running air conditioners. There simply was not enough power from the gas generating plants to cover the load. Because the entire system was running at so close to capacity, a failure triggered a chain reaction of breakers blowing. Cities came to a standstill. This is a warning of similar trouble to come. Peak oil in the USA was back in the 1970s, exactly when Geophysicist Dr. M. King Hubbert, predicted. Amusingly people continued to ridicule him even in the year of peak oil. Peak oil is not the year oil runs out. It is the high point plateau. From an idiot’s perspective, in the peak year, things never looked better. From then on, less and less oil is produced. The coming high cost of energy will reverse the trend to globalisation. Creating power will become a local community concern. Everything from food production to furniture manufacturing will tend to be done locally again, simply to avoid the high costs of transportation.
amazon.ca amazon.com chapters.indigo.ca powells.com amazon.fr barnesandnoble.com amazon.de amazon.co.uk

	recommend book⇒The Coming Oil Crisis
		paperback
	ISBN10:	0-906522-39-0
	ISBN13:	978-0-906522-39-4
	publisher:	Multi-Science Publishing Co. Ltd.
	published:	2005-09-28
	by:	Colin Campbell
The crucial question which Campbell addresses in his book is how much oil remains to be found and for how long global oil resources can continue to support the expected growth in demand.
amazon.ca amazon.com chapters.indigo.ca powells.com amazon.fr barnesandnoble.com amazon.de amazon.co.uk

	recommend book⇒Hard Choices: Climate Change in Canada
	ISBN10:	0-88920-442-X
	ISBN13:	978-0-88920-442-3
	publisher:	Wilfrid Laurier University Press
	published:	2004-05
	by:	Harold Coward and Andrew J. Weaver
A collection of essays by leading Canadian scientists, engineers, social scientists, and humanists that offers an overview and assessment of climate change and its impacts on Canada from physical, social, technological, economic, political, and ethical / religious perspectives. Interpreting and summarizing the large and complex literatures from each of these disciplines, the book offers a multidisciplinary approach to the challenges we face in Canada. Special attention is given to Canada^rsquo;s response to the Kyoto Protocol, as well as an assessment of the overall adequacy of Kyoto as a response to the global challenge of climate change
amazon.ca amazon.com chapters.indigo.ca powells.com amazon.fr barnesandnoble.com amazon.de amazon.co.uk

	recommend book⇒Earthfuture - Stories from a Sustainable World
		paperback
	ISBN10:	0-86571-407-X
	ISBN13:	978-0-86571-407-6
	publisher:	New Society Publishers
	published:	2000-02-01
	by:	Guy Dauncey
As we enter the 21st century, the greatest challenges we face may not be environmental, but psychological - a failure of vision prompted by a world beset by so many problems that people have lost hope and fear that things can only get worse. Earthfuture restores optimism by providing us with positive, and achievable, alternatives. Earthfuture presents over 40 provocative and inspiring glimpses into a world that people are managing to make sustainable. They are premised on the idea that, if we can visualize a paradise on Earth, then we can create it. Set in the early years of the new millennium, it is a world of ecovillages and self-organizing city neighborhoods, of near-zero garbage and climate-friendly cars, of work-sharing and social investment, of neighborhood democracy and the ‘syntropy revolution’, of a world-wide sustainable trade and environment treaty, and the Earth Pledge. In short, it is a world where wealth is defined by peace, a healthy environment, and the high quality of our relationships. At the same time, it is not, of course, a world without its nightmares - such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and genetic pollution. Nor is it without its difficult choices - ecologically managed forests versus business-as-usual, or the free-flow of city traffic versus community gardens… With its mix of utopian fiction, and reportage of near-reality, Earthfuture sows the seeds of an alternative future with skill and obvious delight. Highly readable and accessible, it will appeal to a wide readership including social and environmental activists, progressive urban planners and local government officials, and students in environmental, social, and urban studies, and community economic development - as well as the general reader tired of the doom and gloom. earthfuture.com
amazon.ca amazon.com chapters.indigo.ca powells.com amazon.fr barnesandnoble.com amazon.de amazon.co.uk

	recommend book⇒Re-Visioning the Earth: A Guide TO Opening The Healing Channels Between Mind And Nature.
		paperback
	ISBN10:	0-684-80063-2
	ISBN13:	978-0-684-80063-9
	publisher:	Fireside
	published:	1996-10-23
	by:	Paul Devereux
This is an unusual book, about how different cultures experience the natural world. Our experience depends much more on our Western cultural conditioning than we would ever imagine. It is one of the few books I have seen that tackle the same subjects as my essay called Experience Is A Hallucination. “The truth surely is what we may ultimately come to do is destroy the particular type of life as we know it. If that happens, then, of course, our species would die off (alas, taking make other species with it): in the grim final analysis, the problem would be self-correcting. The earth can be a stern as well as bountiful mother, and were we to disappear she would have the ages that belong to her in which to restore herself before giving birth to other orders of life. Earth’s song will go on whether or not we are part of it.” ~ Paul Devereux
amazon.ca amazon.com chapters.indigo.ca powells.com amazon.fr barnesandnoble.com amazon.de amazon.co.uk

	recommend book⇒Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
		paperback
	ISBN10:	0-14-303655-6
	ISBN13:	978-0-14-303655-5
	publisher:	Penguin
	published:	2005-12-27
	by:	Jared Diamond
This book is not about global warming per se, just the ostrich-like mindset humans adopt to deal with such problems. This is a very broad look at the collapse of civilisations throughout history and the way societies ignored the environmental problems that eventually did them in. He covers such diverse cultures as the Anasazi of the American Southwest, the Viking colonies in Greenland and modern Rwanda. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst. Recommended by Bill Moyers in his address to the Hamilton College graduating class.
amazon.ca amazon.com chapters.indigo.ca