Canadian Oil: At What Price?  

TreeHugger has a post on the environmental costs of mining tar sands in Canada (which I've droned on about at length previously). They don't mention future possibilities like putting a nuclear plant in the region to keep the tar flowing once natural gas supplies start disappearing.

Most of you are already aware of the damage caused by the burning and the extraction of oil (like the apprehended damage caused by extraction in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, for example). But what about the famous Canadian tar sands? After only two years of digging for bitumen near Fort McMurray in Alberta, Shell has already dug up a pit that is as much as three miles wide and 200 feet deep. 400-ton trucks, said to be the largest in the world, are used to move around all that dirt, and it takes a lot of it since on average 2 tons of tar sand are required to make 1 barrel of oil.

The oil operation has been a boon for Fort McMurray and its people. But some observers are worried about the facility's impact on the environment.

After processing the sand to extract its oily component, the gigantic holes dug in the earth are refilled and planted with trees. But the refilled mine pits rarely match the original terrain, and replanting programs so far have resulted in forests that resemble Christmas tree farms.

So much for repairing the damage done.

But companies are now moving away from these huge pits; a new technique allows them to inject steam directly into the soil to melt the tar enough so that it can be pumped back to the surface.

Whatever the process used, it takes a great deal of energy to recover bitumen and turn it into oil. An enormous amount of greenhouse gases are released in the process.

In fact, making oil from tar sands produces two or three times more greenhouse gases than producing conventional oil.

How do they produce so much energy? With natural gas, of course. It is one of the main reasons why Canada has so much trouble meeting its obligations under the Kyoto treaty.

Because the cost of natural gas has quadrupled in recent times and with the coming of peak natural gas, the Canadian tar sands should become more and more expensive as time goes on (most companies there have already run way over their predicted costs), both in monetary and environmental costs.

WorldChanging has a post on Geothermal heat pumps - the cheapest (and least energy intensive) way of cooling or heating homes.

It's a little odd to think about, but you're probably standing on one of the best possible resources for home heating and cooling.

Although temperatures in the atmosphere can vary considerably over the course of a year (or even a day), the temperature underground remains fairly constant. At about six feet under, the soil measures from 45 degrees to 75 degrees fahrenheit, depending upon latitude. And this consistency, it turns out, can be a resource for keeping one's home warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Geothermal heat pumps move heat from one place to another via the circulation of a refrigerant fluid. They have a number of advantages over traditional heating and cooling systems, including low noise and essentially no maintenance. Most importantly, they use significantly less energy than traditional gas, electric or oil-based heating & cooling systems.

Tom Wipple's latest peak oil article in the Falls Church News Press takes a look at what is happening with the Gulf stream.

A couple of months back I discussed the North Atlantic Oscillation and how the British Meteorological Office was very concerned a flattening of the Atlantic's high and low pressure areas was going to make for an exceptionally cold winter in Northern Europe. This phenomenon also allows frigid Canadian air to make its way into the northeastern US resulting in higher prices for heating oil, diesel, gasoline, natural gas and nearly everything else. Winter is now two weeks away, and the British Meteorologists are still holding to their forecast of an unusually cold winter.

Last week, however, a new and more disturbing report was published by the Southampton Oceanography Centre in the UK concerning the stability of the Gulf Stream — a major heat source keeping Northern Europe from becoming Northern Siberia . It seems that since the last time they took measurements 12 years ago, the flow of fresh water from the melting of the north polar ice cap has interfered significantly with the Gulf Stream . Some 30 percent of the Stream’s warm water is no longer making it to the vicinity of Northern Europe , but is being diverted back towards the equator.

A drop of 30 percent in the flow should have been enough to cause an as-yet-to-happen drop in the average North European temperature. Some suggest the increasing world wide average temperature— global warming— is enough to offset the loss of heat from the Gulf Stream as far as Europe is concerned.

All this may only be an interesting (or perhaps not) academic debate, as not much seems to have happened to Northern Europe , as yet. However, what happens to the 30 percent of the warm water no longer making it to the North Atlantic ? I would like to thank Stuart Staniford of the web site The Oil Drum for explaining in detail that vast quantities of warm water are now flowing southward towards those regions of the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico where the hurricanes spawn.

Last week, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) held a press conference on the 2005 Hurricane season. As we all suspected, the season shattered nearly every record ever kept about hurricanes. In short, it was two hurricane seasons rolled into one.

Moreover, NOAA says there is no relief in sight. The forecasters believe we are at the beginning of a 20-30 year era of increased hurricane activity. Now, if we learned anything from listening to those meteorologists describe the approach of all those hurricanes this year, it’s that warm water makes hurricanes and that very warm water makes very strong hurricanes.

In the last 15 months, three major hurricanes have slammed into our oil production facilities in the Gulf causing extensive damage. Six weeks after the last hurricane, about one third of Gulf oil production is still out of service. This new report that massive amounts of warm water are now flowing into the southward not only suggests, but screams, there are major troubles ahead.

TomPaine notes that there are some moves in the US to start taking an active (instead of blocking) role in dealing with global warming as the follow up to the Kyoto treaty is negotiated - a sign that Exxon's "climate change" denial camp is slowly falling apart.

The editors at The Economist got religion this week. The release of a report in the journal Nature , by Harry Bryden of the National Oceanography Centre in Southhampton, Britain, provided the first compelling evidence that global warming threatens more significant near-term effects—the rapid cooling of the British Isles and Northern Europe—than previously thought credible. In short, global warming is melting Arctic ice at such a rate that it has reduced the Atlantic currents that warm Europe—by 30 percent.

And that figure reminds us of the Pentagon-sponsored study looking into just this scenario, called Abrupt Climate Change . The scenario makes it clear that if the Atlantic heat conveyor shuts down, Northern Europe goes into a deep freeze, requiring a lot more imported energy to stay warm and dramatically disrupting local food supplies. Now that climate change is getting personal, The Economist appears ready to accept the science. All climate politics is local, it seems.

The Nature report and The Economist's response could not have been better timed. In Montreal, the world is gathering to discuss, among other climate change issues, the future of the Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012. Significantly, the Bush administration chose to avoid the talks, having thrown its weight behind its own creation, a voluntary emission-reduction program that combines the U.S., China and Australia, among others.

We don't yet know what the Atlantic revelations will do to the debate. Politicians have a really hard time dealing with the potential collapse of a non-linear system—whether it is the housing bubble or the ecosystem. But two statements by Democratic senators made it clear this week that U.S. obstructionism will not last too much longer.

Writing in the Financial Times today, Sen. Joe Biden stood up to say that he accepts the climate science, that we have to act, and that there exists a great opportunity that doing right by climate change will do well for the American economy. Therefore, Biden said America has to lead: "Without U.S. leadership and participation, there is no way to stabilise global greenhouse gases before irreparable harm is done." Biden and his GOP colleague Richard Lugar have submitted a bill to force the White House to act.

Sen. Jeff Bingamon of New Mexico delivered a similar message to the delegates in Montreal in person. According to an account in Environment and Energy Daily , Bingamon told the world's representatives to continue to push forward with post-Kyoto negotiations. Bingamon believes that the Senate is nearing a bipartisan compromise on how to implement climate change language passed this past summer and that soon we will be back at the table. "We should step up and have a significant role in whatever agreements are being designed for the period following the Kyoto Protocol," Bingamon said.

What's really happening is the undermining of the climate deniers' position. Led by ExxonMobil , which funded millions of dollars of spurious science and congressional lobbying, climate deniers are becoming more and more marginalized, in part because the American 80 percent of the American public wants something done on global warming, and in part because other elites are recognizing the threat, like The Economist this week.

Jeff Vail has another oil related post up, this one noting that the M3 money supply indicator (which is probably the best guide to the effects of the Iranian oil bourse opening on the strength of the petro-dollar) is being discontinued (something which got quite a lot of attention in bearish parts of the economic analysis world a few months back) next March (the same time the bourse is due to open). He also notes that Ariel Sharon has ordered Israel's military to be ready to strike Iran's nuclear facilities by March as well. It will be interesting to see how much anti-Iranian noise we see getting generated in coming months. I for one won't be keeping much money in the markets (oil and gold price leveraged stuff excepted of course) once February arrives if the war drums are beating.

I might note that religious fundamentalists are right at the top of my list of things I don't like, and most press reports would tend to place Iran's new President firmly in that category, with all sorts of absolutely outrageously anti-semitic quotes being attributed to him that no one in their right mind would defend (though the Heritage Foundation might try perhaps, if that link is to be believed).

However, given my cynicism about manipulation of the media and the convenient nature of this particular leader fitting so neatly our stereotype of evil islamic fundamentalists, I found this note over at Moon of Alabama quite troubling - is it possible we're just being fed another nightmare vision which isn't entirely true ?

George Monbiot took a mirror along to the Climate March last weekend and identified the problem - us - in "The Struggle Against Ourselves".

I want to take a moment to remind you of where we have come from.

For the first three million years of human history, we lived according to circumstance. Our lives were ruled by the happenstances of ecology. We existed, as all animals do, in fear of hunger, predation, weather and disease.

For the following few thousand years, after we had grasped the rudiments of agriculture and crop storage, we enjoyed greater food security, and soon destroyed most of our non-human predators. But our lives were ruled by the sword, the axe and the spear. The primary struggle was for land. We needed it not just to grow our crops but also to provide our sources of energy – grazing for our horses and bullocks, wood for our fires.

Then we discovered fossil fuels, and everything changed. No longer were we constrained by the need to live on ambient energy; we could support ourselves by means of the sunlight stored over the preceding 350 million years. The new sources of energy permitted the economy to grow – to grow sufficiently to absorb some of the people expelled by the previous era’s land disputes. Fossil fuels allowed both industry and cities to expand, which permitted the workers to organise and to force the despots to loosen their grip on power.

Fossil fuels helped us fight wars of a horror never contemplated before, but they also reduced the need for war. For the first time in human history, indeed for the first time in biological history, there was a surplus of available energy. We could keep body and soul together without having to fight someone else for the energy we needed. Agricultural productivity rose 10 or 20 fold. Economic productivity rose 100 fold. Most of us could live as no one had ever lived before.

And everything you see around you results from that. We have been able to assemble here from all corners of the country because of fossil fuels. We have not been charged and cut down by the yeomanry – or not yet at any rate – because of fossil fuels. Our freedoms, our comforts, our prosperity are all the result of fossil fuels.

Ours are the most fortunate generations that have ever lived. Ours are the most fortunate generations that ever will. We inhabit the brief historical interlude between ecological constraint and ecological catastrophe.

I don’t have to remind you of the two forces which are converging on our lives. We are faced with an impending shortage of the source of energy which is hardest to replace – liquid fossil fuels. And we are faced with the environmental consequences of the fossil fuel burning which has permitted us to be standing here now. The structure, the complexity, the diversity of our lives, everything we know, everything that we have taken for granted, that looked solid and non-negotiable, suddenly looks contingent. All this is a great tottering pile balanced on a ball, a ball that is about to start rolling downhill.

I hear people talking about the carbon cuts they would like to see. I am not interested in what people would like to see. I am interesed in what the science says. And the science is clear. We need not a 20% cut by 2020; not a 60% cut by 2050, but a 90% cut by 2030. Only then do we stand a good chance of keeping carbon concentrations in the atmosphere below 430 parts per million, which means that only then do we stand a good chance of preventing some of the threatened positive feedbacks. If we let it get beyond that point there is nothing we can do. The biosphere takes over as the primary source of carbon. It is out of our hands.

WorldChanging had an interesting post last week called "Europe 2005: The Ecological Footprint" which noted that we are well into overshoot, depleting renewable resources 23% faster than they are being regenerated.

The European Environment Agency, working with the World Wildlife Foundation and the Global Footprint Network, has produced a 2005 Edition of the National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts showing that, as of 2002, "humanity's demand on the biosphere, its global Ecological Footprint, was 13.7 billion global hectares, or 2.2 global hectares per person."

Thus in 2002, humanity's Ecological Footprint exceeded global biocapacity by 0.4 global hectares per person, or 23 percent. This finding indicates that the human economy is in ecological overshoot: the planet's ecological stocks are being depleted faster than nature can regenerate them. This means that we are eroding the future supply of ecological resources and operating at the risk of environmental collapse.

WorldChanging also had an interesting post on "Things That Should Exist" - in this case "Energy Banks".

One of the obstacles facing energy-saving retrofits or construction of manufacturing systems and buildings is that up-front costs are often high, even when money is saved in the long run. But if you install a solar array that has a five-year payback time, it has a 20% annual return on investment; this far higher than the return of most stocks, and it is risk-free, since electricity prices are not going to go down--it can only get better than 20%. The same is even more true for gas-saving investments, where price volatility can be high.

Clearly there are good investments to be made here. Someone create an "Energy Bank" to make good money while helping people get over their up-front cost paranoia or genuine lack of capital. It would be slightly different from a normal bank, with less risk for the borrower and more profit for the lender. An energy bank would give people the money for their energy-efficient / on-site generation systems, and in return would get paid not a flat rate but a chunk of the energy-cost savings. The exact terms could be anything--maybe the bank gets paid 80% of the customer's resulting energy cost savings for several years until the "loan" is paid off at a profitable rate, maybe the bank gets 40% of the customer's energy cost savings in perpetuity, whatever the market will bear. Energy savings would be easy to measure for retrofits (just compare to historical usage and current energy prices), and for new construction they could be compared to national averages or other benchmarks.

The customer would be at less risk because they would only pay if they got a financial benefit from the installation, and would always get more benefit than they had to pay out. The bank would make more money than a normal loan because they could have very long-term income and because many efficiency measures are known to give great returns on investment at low risk.

Finally - one more piece from TreeHugger - this one on "The Loon" - a Solar-Powered pontoon boat.

Six-day boating cruise along Ontario's scenic Trent-Severn Waterway: "Cost of fuel for the 100-mile cruise? Zero. Amount of air and water pollution? Zero. Number of stares from other boaters? Countless." Monte Gisborne is a mechanical engineer who built The Loon, a solar-powered pontoon boat. "A guy with a 45-foot powerboat said his fuel costs were $5 a mile. I can do 10 miles a day for free with the sun [and 30 to 40 miles with batteries]," Gisborne said.

The Loon is 20 feet long and is topped by a custom 738 watt solar panel. Since most recreational boating is done when the weather is nice, solar power is particularly well adapted to the task.