Archive for June, 2007

Climate Chaos Coming Soon To Planet Near You

Thursday, June 28th, 2007

By Val Germann

As most Star Phoenix Base readers undoubtedly know, the weather on dear old Mother Earth has been going wild again this spring and summer. Some unfortunate locale in Texas picked up 18-inches of rain the other day, in about SIX HOURS, and it was not as the result of a hurricane or tropical storm. No, that massive deluge was just “a lot of rain” out of a more-or-less standard kind of frontal passage. Could this be a harbinger of a “new normal” for Texas weather? Yes, it could.

The key was contained in an article originating with the AFP and carried recently on the ENERGY DAILY website. The operative section is this:

Between 2000 and 2004, worldwide CO2 emissions increased at a rate that is over three times the rate during the 1990s-the rate increased from 1.1 % per year during the 1990s to 3.1% per year in the early 2000s.

This is a devastating statement, one that should be striking fear into policy makers from pole-to-pole here on our benighted planet. While it’s definitely true that total fossil fuel use is going up world wide, it didn’t suddenly go up THAT fast. No, what likely happened is something else, such as a major “sink” for CO2 suddenly losing it’s effectiveness. It that’s true then within a few years it should become evident and everyone will wake up to a whole new planet, one in the throes of a “runaway greenhouse effect,” flying up to some unknown and most likely ruinous level.

A long time ago Napoleon Bonapart said, as his end approached, “Apres moi, le deluge!” And of course, he was right, in a figurative way. Today, for whole planet, the possiblity that “After us, comes the deluge,” may be literally coming true. –

Posted in Climate Change, Conflict and War, Global Security | 1 Comment »

Canada’s Tar Sands Oil: Environmental Disaster

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

by Val Germann

As Star Phoenix Base readers know, Alberta has passed Texas as an oil-producing region and the North American petroleum pipelines are running north-to-south today instead of the other way around. Alberta is producing more than one million barrels of oil per day, on the way to three milion barrels per day by 2015. But the cost is high and getting higher, and not just in monetary terms, as this quote from a TERRADAILY article indicates:

Open pits now dot the northern part of Alberta province where vast tracts of the Boreal Forest once stood, and giant mechanical shovels now devour black oil-encrusted soil day and night.

Oil from tar sands is an environmental disaster, to say the least. The TERRADAILY article quotes Al Gore on the new Canadian crude:

“For every barrel of oil they extract there, they have to use enough natural gas to heat a family’s home for four days,” Gore [said]. And they have to tear up four tonnes of landscape, all for one barrel of oil. It is truly nuts.”

Yes, it is truly nuts, but it’s making piles of money for a lot of people, none of whom are interested in having U.S. consumers change their lifestyles or driving habits, not with petroleum spot prices at $65-70 US per barrel. There is simply too much money in it, regardless of any environmental downside. The Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Harper, summed up the general general attitude of his administration:

This government isn’t going to implement any measures that would do severe damage to Canadian jobs or to the Canadian economy,” Harper told reporters at the close of the spring parliamentary session. “We will continue implementing our (own) national system of regulations.”

This statement, from another current TERRADAILY article, was made in the wake of the Canadian Senate voting to force Harper’s government to abide by the Kyoto protocol, now a truly dead letter, world-wide. There is little doubt that oil from tar sands has ended any chance Canada ever had of living up to that agreement. The quote below quickly tells the sad tale:

A previous Liberal administration had agreed under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce CO2 emissions to 6.0 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, but a 2006 government environmental audit found emissions had instead increased by 35 percent.

And they are going to keep on increasing, too, because the intention is, as outlined above, to double tar sands oil output over the next decade or so, with devastaing effects for Canada’s CO2 emissions.

So, add Canada to the list of CO2 deadbeats, along with China, India and Brazil. Deliberate govenment policies have been put in hand that have made impossible any decrease in emissions from those countries. –

Posted in Age of Oil, Climate Change, Forest Destruction, Pollution | Comments Off

China Becomes World Leader in Carbon Emissions

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

By David L. Brown

As expected, China has exceeded the United States as a producer of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas responsible for global warming and climate change. According to a story yesterday in The Guardian (read it here):

The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China’s growing role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that includes the booming Chinese economy. China’s emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world’s biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year.

Of course, the announcement wasn’t a particular surprise to us here at Star Phoenix Base because we have been aware that the Middle Kingdom has been building coal-powered power plants at the rate of one or more per week while adding tens of thousands of private vehicles to a rapidly expanding highway system. Here is a photo that illustrates the nature of the problem:

china372x192.jpg

The figures were released by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, which concluded that China produced 6,200 million tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800 million tonnes from the US. Britain produced about 600 million tonnes. According to The Guardian’s report:

Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the government agency who compiled the figures, said: “There will still be some uncertainty about the exact numbers, but this is the best and most up to date estimate available. China relies very heavily on coal and all of the recent trends show their emissions going up very quickly.” China’s emissions were 2% below those of the US in 2005. Per head of population, China’s pollution remains relatively low – about a quarter of that in the US and half that of the UK.

The new figures only include carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production. They do not include sources of other greenhouse gases, such as methane from agriculture and nitrous oxide from industrial processes. And they exclude other sources of carbon dioxide, such as from the aviation and shipping industries, as well as from deforestation, gas flaring and underground coal fires.

Dr Olivier said it was hard to find up to date and reliable estimates for such emissions, particularly from countries in the developing world. But he said including them would be unlikely to topple China from top spot. “Since China passed the US by 8% [in 2006] it will be pretty hard to compensate for that with other sources of emissions.”

While The Guardian didn’t mention it, according to a recent story in The Washington Post the U.S. contribution to CO2 emissions actually declined in the last year even though the economy grew by 3.3 percent. The Post’s article, which appeared May 24, added that:

The 1.3 percent drop in CO2 emissions marks the first time that U.S. pollution linked to global warming has declined in absolute terms since 2001 and the first time it has gone down since 1990 while the economy was thriving. Carbon dioxide emissions declined in both 2001 and 1991, in large part because of economic slowdowns during those years.

According to the Post article (read it here), “A number of factors helped reduce emissions last year, according to the government, including weather conditions that reduced heating and air-conditioning use, higher gasoline prices that caused consumers to conserve, and a greater overall reliance on natural gas.”

The fact that China and other “emerging economies” were given a free pass by the Kyoto Accords is the main reason why the Senate sent President Bill Clinton a unanimous vote of no confidence affirming that if presented with the treaty for confirmation, the legislative body would reject it. Thus, even though Clinton and Vice President Al Gore strongly favored participation in Kyoto, it was never presented to the Senate. (It is commonly believed that George Bush was responsible for the U.S. failure to join in the Accords, but that is clearly not true. The fault, if such it is, lay with the Senate and it took place during the Clinton administration. That is not to say that the Bush administration has shown itself to be at all green, although there seems to be a recent shift in that direction.)

China is continuing to grow its economy as if there were no tomorrow, and unfortunately they are modeling that growth on a duplication of the industrial expansion that began in the West a century or more ago. The belching steel mills and factories that once dotted the American landscape are no more, and it is plain that the environment and supplies of natural resources do not support a repeat of that industrialization. And yet, that is exactly what China is doing. With a population well over one billion and growing, the outlook cannot be very encouraging for reining in the world’s emissions of greenhouse gas. And no matter how much progress is made in America, with the Chinese building a second industrial age the CO2 load in our atmosphere will continue to grow, causing increased warming and climate change that could prove disastrous.

Posted in Climate Change, Fossil Fuels | 1 Comment »

Kansas Wheat Harvest Tanks as Famine Looms

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

By David L. Brown

The Kansas winter wheat crop is in the toilet. According to a report issued yesterday by the Kansas office of the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (my emphasis):

Ninety-two percent of the wheat has turned, compared to 97 percent for both last year and the 5-year average. Twenty-four percent of the wheat is ripe, compared to 82 percent last year and 58 percent for the 5-year average. Two percent has been harvested, compared to 48 percent last year and 19 percent for the 5-year average. Wheat condition was rated 15 percent very poor, 22 percent poor, 29 percent fair, 25 percent good, and 9 percent excellent.

Even much of the crop that is rated in fair, good or excellent condition may be lost as unusually wet weather and flooding continues. According to an Associated Press report today, the severe conditions were caused by a combination of factors. According to the AP story the prospects were excellent for the 2007 wheat crop…

…[B]ut that was before the Easter weekend freeze, before the disease pressure, before the insect infestations and the heavy rains. Before the floods.

“Everything combined has really challenged this year’s crop — especially in southern Kansas,” said Dusti Fritz, chief executive officer for Kansas Wheat, a venture of the Kansas Wheat Commission and the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers.

In some areas of the state it is expected that the crop will be virtually a total loss. Custom combine operators have already moved on to other areas looking for work, and they might have difficulty finding it. In Oklahoma for example the situation is not much better, with the USDA estimating that only 41 percent of the wheat crop in that state has been harvested, versus a normal 92 percent by this date.

After seven years of drought, Kansas wheat farmers had hoped for a good crop this year. Now their only hope is that the unusually moist conditions this year will produce good yields of grain sorghum, corn, and other Spring-planted crops. That remains to be seen.

We are reminded once again of how fragile a thing is human existence on a planet that is stretched to the limit to feed more than 6.5 billion hungry mouths. And we must once more point out that as the wheat crop turns up a busted flush with lots of chips on the table, dozens of ethanol plants are nearing completion to turn a large proportion of this year’s corn crop into fake gasoline. Meanwhile, drought and other climate change events are hitting in other regions of the world, most notably in Australia where rivers are running dry and crops from this former food exporting continent have almost completely failed.

In Mexico we have already reported food riots due to skyrocketing prices of tortillas made from U.S. corn. How long before more serious events will begin to take place as the world supply of grain diminishes and prices soar? That will likely happen soon, for the grain reserves are razor thin. Many nations that depend on imported food may soon find that is not just a question of paying more for food, but that they are unable to buy food at any price because richer nations will outbid them.

If that takes place, it will introduce the stark specter of Famine in many parts of the over-populated Third World, and when that grim member of the Four Horsemen takes to the saddle to ride across the lands, his fellows Pestilence, War and Death are sure to accompany him.

Are we beginning to see the final harvest of those numerous toxic seeds of disaster sown over so many years? As the sizzling population “bomb” predicted by Paul Ehrlich and others nears the detonation point, the world is reaching Peak Oil and America is giving tax incentives to farmers and ethanol producers to turn food into a substitute for gasoline. And the saddest part of all is that hardly anyone seems to be aware of how serious this situation is. Either that, or they don’t care, in which case it represents criminal negligence on the part of every so-called “leader” who could have made sound decisions but opted to let the disaster unfold without making even the slightest attempt to head it off.

What folly, what insanity, what a bizarre comedy of errors we are witnessing.

Posted in Agriculture Issues, Climate Change | 1 Comment »

At Last, a Solution to Global Warming

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

By David L. Brown

There’s great news today! A scientist at Rutgers University and his climate modeling team have determined that if a regional nuclear war should take place, for example between India and Pakistan, the effect would stop global warming in its tracks.

This delightful result would take place because of an effect first described about two decades ago in an article describing “nuclear winter,” a scenario in which the Soviet Union and Western nuclear powers might engage in an exchange of nuclear and hydrogen bombs. The original model showed a complete environmental disaster for the Earth, akin to the destructive meteor that caused the demise of the dinosaurs.

The less extreme scenario envisioned by Alan Robock, and reported in the June 9 issue of New Scientist, would call for a limited and regional nuclear exchange in which 100 relatively small Hiroshima-sized bombs would be ignited over cities. According to Dr. Robock’s model, such an event would inject about 5 million tonnes of black carbon soot into the atmosphere, causing a reduction in global temperatures of about 1.4 degrees Centigrade.

According to the New Scientist report:

Growing seasons in the middle latitudes would be shortened and in some cases fail entirely. “By explaining the consequences to the world, we hope that nothing like this will ever happen,” says Robock.

Well, wait just a minute. Here we have been looking for an answer to the global warming problem for a long time, and just as soon as Robock finds a plausible mechanism to attain that goal he jerks it back like a man teasing a dog with a bone. Climate change is a significant threat to humanity, so we should not ignore any possibility. Let’s examine this subject a bit more carefully before we cast it aside.

In fact, Robock’s description, at least as reported, falls far short of revealing the full benefits of a regional nuclear war. For example, he focuses exclusively on the direct Sun-blocking effect of soot, and does not take into account how such an event would impact the problem of over-population that underlies the entire issue of greenhouse gas induced global climate change. Any nuclear war that might involve up to 100 Hiroshima sized bombs would have a significant impact on population numbers in the belligerent nations, which are already prime examples of humanity’s mega-fecundity.

According to Wikipedia, about 140,000 Japanese died in the original attack. Multiply that by 100 to get a rough idea of the potential death toll in Dr. Robock’s model, or 14 million. But, since the size of cities has grown by leaps and bounds since 1945—and particularly in places like India and Pakistan where people are almost as common as dirt in other places—let’s add a factor of 10 to that number and assume that 140 million people would be immediately eliminated from the global gene pool. Well, not so many really against more than 6.5 billion, but it would be a start. A lot fewer human beings would be leaving an environmental footprint on the Earth.

Then there is the beneficial fact that economic consequences would surely result from such an event, causing involuntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions all around the globe. That, too, would reduce the effect of humanity on global warming.

But it wouldn’t stop there. Because of the changes in growing conditions mentioned by Robock, food would become scarce and famine would be sure to spread during the following months and years. It’s easy to imagine that the result could be somewhat like a magnified version of the “Year Without Summer” in 1816 that resulted from mere volcanic eruptions. Even that event, at a time when human numbers were far smaller than today, led to massive starvation and death around the world. In today’s over-populated condition, if farm production were to be significantly reduced it could cause the loss of hundreds of millions or even billions of human lives. That would have a truly wonderful effect on the problem of climate change, which is after all the result of human numbers.

Well, you have probably figured out by now that I am speaking with tongue in cheek, somewhat as when Jonathan Swift proposed that the Irish famine could be solved by encouraging the Irish to eat their own children. No one could possibly portray a nuclear war as a reasonable solution to climate change. However, it should be noted that the depth of the problem can be reflected by the seriousness of this suggested “solution.”

We should remain vigilant to the possibility that unstable nation-states in possession of nuclear weapons remain a clear and present danger to civilization. But there are better ways to address the problem of climate change than through nuclear war. On the whole, let’s not lose sight of the fact that continuing lack of attention to the question of human-caused global warming is probably a worse threat than any nuclear one.

Posted in Climate Change, Essays and Opinion | 3 Comments »

Dogbert: Pro-active Environmentalist

Monday, June 18th, 2007

By David L. Brown

I never miss a chance to read the Dilbert cartoon strip. In fact, it’s the only one I follow and over the years I have found many pearls of wisdom from Scott Adams’s genius. Today was no exception, and since it involves our favorite subject — how to react to climate change and declining energy resources — I present the strip here:

dilbert21222010070618.jpg

As usual, Dogbert is one step ahead of Dilbert and ready to put his own ideas to immediate use. Will Dilbert lose his job and thus help save the planet?

Unfortunately, there are no simple answers to the ongoing destruction of our planet, the result of human fecundity and greed and the limited resources of the Earth. What we need is the “dogged” determination to face the challenges of over-population, resource depletion and climate change with resolve and commitment. Sadly, such determination is likely to be seen only in a comic, and not in the real world where serious questions are seldom even considered because to paraphrase Al Gore, they are “inconvenient truths” that politicians, auto makers, and oil companies do not want to acknowledge.

In fact, Dogbert’s strategy reflects a common error that pervades the subject — namely, the constant search for easy answers. Giving bad advice costs nothing, and is therefore an appealing “solution” to our environmental problems. Similar “feel good” easy solutions include the idea of planting trees to offset one’s heavy environmental “footprint,” and all manner of other ways of pretending to do something about the environment without actually being inconvenienced.

We need some inconveniencing here, folks.

Posted in Satire, Irony, and Humor | Comments Off

Climate Change Seen as Causis Belli in Darfur

Monday, June 18th, 2007

By David L. Brown

It may have seemed obvious to some of us for a long time that the combination of climate change and overpopulation is creating the background for ecological and human disaster. But for a long time the subject of overpopulation has been an unmentionable “third rail” in public discourse, and climate change has been the subject of a program of denial.

Now thanks to recent reports from the IPCC, the Stern Report, and a paper from the National Research Council climate change is being recognized as an irrefutable fact. And thus, its role in unfortunate human events is being noted. A news report today from the AFP news agency describes the substance of an op-ed piece that appeared in this weekend’s Washington Post by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

[Ban] said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, in an article published Saturday.”The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change,” Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.

UN statistics showed that rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, he said, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons.

“This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming,” the South Korean diplomat wrote.

“It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought,” Ban said in the Washington daily.

When Darfur’s land was rich, he said, black farmers welcomed Arab herders and shared their water, he said.

This kind of thing has been taking place across Africa for several decades, but past interpretations have painted the ecological disasters as isolated events. Now that climate change is being seen as a global effect, there is sure to be wider understanding of how serious it is. Not only Africa is at stake. Today in Australia farmers are being virtually wiped out by a drought so severe that rivers have run dry. In Alaska the permafrost is melting and threatening an end to the native Inuit way of life.

Everywhere you look there are signs of climate change, and we can expect to hear more about its effect on human affairs as our planet moves in unpredictable directions. Some experts fear that we are reaching “tipping points” which will lead to rapid and irreversible change that could cause massive famine, huge flows of climate refugees trying to escape to more stable places (such as America and Europe), and other catastrophic events.

Posted in Climate Change | Comments Off

Battle Lines Hardening Over Climate Implications

Friday, June 15th, 2007

by Val Germann

The increasing evidence for global warming and climate change, coupled with calls for world wide action to combat them, is leading to lines being drawn in the dirt, battle lines.

One set of them appeared in THE FINANCIAL TIMES this week, in an article by Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, a nation just now coming into something like “prosperity” in the New Europe.

The last thing the Czechs want is an EU-wide clampdown on energy use due to global warming concerns. They are late to the party and want to catch up, which they can’t do if the climate change folks get their way.

How serious is this? Well, for the Czechs anyone supporting real action on climate is a de-facto enemy of the state. The operative quote is this:

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

So, there you have it: environmentalism compared to communism, by people who should know, right?

This was anticipated by Eugene Schwartz in his book OVERSKILL, reported on previously here at Star Phoenix Base. His most relevant passage is set out below, concerning what it will take, on a planetary basis, to reverse the long-running destructive trends in our culture. It will not be pretty, as we all probably should know.

The world-wide counter-technology will be a super-system. It will require a giant organization to monitor world-wide technology use, collect and evaluate data, and devise and operate appropriate counter-technologies. The system will be complex and intricate. It will require large forces for its proper maintenance. It will include a world-wide political system to police and enforce its edicts.

What is the above except true world government, and what else can end the anarchy of nations we see today?

But what are the chances of any such thing actually coming into existance given the current world situation? They are not great and will not be so until the climate problem becomes plainly and obviously dire, even to people like Mr. Klaus, by which time it will likely be FAR too late.

Yes, indeed, it’s going to be a long rough ride, no matter where we all eventually end up. –

Posted in Climate Change, Politics | Comments Off

Who Will Suffer as Oil Becomes a Weapon?

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

By David L. Brown

For decades oil producers in the Mideast have worked, individually and through OPEC, to hold down the price of oil. The purpose was at least two-fold:

First, to prevent high prices from suppressing demand (the thinking being to sell as much of the stuff as possible, since it was in plentiful supply and virtually free to the producers).

Second, to create disincentives to the development of alternative energy methods that could also threaten the demand for petroleum.

That was then, and this is now. Today oil is no longer plentiful and demand is nipping at the heels of supply. At the same time, Muslim nations in the Mideast have become more troubled internally, and troublesome to the world at large. Saddam had his day, but now it is Iran that poses the biggest threat to stability, both politically and in the international petroleum markets. In fact, just as Russia is using its new-found energy club against its once-and-future enemies in Europe, Iran is using the threat of disrupting the Persian Gulf oil fields as a weapon against the West.

Here is a quote from a Reuters story yesterday quoting Mohammad Bager Zolghadr, an Iranian deputy Interior Minister for Security Affairs, predicting the result of a presumed attack on Iran by America:

‘Today, if the slightest disorder in the region’s security and in the security of the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf is created, oil prices will reach $250 a barrel and this will lead to the death of European countries and America in terms of economy and security,’ he added.

Worries about any supply disruption from the world’s fourth biggest oil exporter, Iran, have been one of the factors helping to prop up oil prices. US crude is now around $65 a barrel.

So as we can see petroleum is no longer being seen merely as a commodity, but as a tool of power, a kind of “doomsday machine”. Like the Russians in their new-found arrogance, the Iranians believe that they can with impunity threaten the stability of the entire planet not only with their soon-to-be atomic weapons, but also through the threat of cutting off the oil supply. Neither of these terror strategies seems likely to yield great happiness for the perpetrators, and reminds me somewhat of a little boy threatening to hold his breath unless he gets his way.

Let’s assume that the West is forced to respond militarily to Iran’s nuclear and conventional threats, and that in accordance with their wildest dreams the Persians are able to lay waste to the Gulf oil infrastructure. (Nevermind what would be likely to happen to their own nation.) Would such an event result in “the death of European countries and America” as purported in the article quoted above. Almost certainly not.

(more…)

Posted in Age of Oil | 3 Comments »