2022.03.28 One of the big problems in stopping climate change is that tax dollars are used to accelerate it

B.C.’s largest fossil fuel subsidy cost the province over $1B last year (National Observer)
That's over $1 Billion from a single loophole in a single province which essentially produces no oil.

2022.03.28 Canada's 'new' GHG emissions plan doesn't just miss the mark, it's going in the wrong direction.

Why Canada's oilpatch can't solve the energy crisis (CBC)

2022.03.30 In case you still think experts are not sounding alarms about catastrophic climate change happening now

More oil and gas production, carbon capture tax credits raise questions about climate plan’s credibility (National Observer)

2022.03.20 In case you still think experts are not sounding alarms about catastrophic climate change happening now

Stonewalled: Alberta ignored warnings about oil and gas cleanup, ex-government scientist says (The Narwhal)

2022.03.20 95 per cent of Alberta oil and gas sites certified as reclaimed have never been inspected by provincial officials

Heat waves at both of the Earth’s poles alarm climate scientists (The Guardian)

2022.03.15 Disaster Capitalism - using Ukraine to justify the unsustainable, which will arrive too late anyway

Sadly, but unsurprisingly, the oil industry and head bitumen cheerleader Jason Kenney - the accidental Premier of Alberta - have spumed that the solution to Europe's short-term fossil fuel inconvenience should be solved by ramping up the production of Alberta's bitumen, natural gas and coal production and delivery infrastructure, dubbing it 'ethical oil'. This is the wrong answer, for a few reasons.
a) Until Alberta and Canada get their house in order on truth and reconciliation with Canada's indigenous nations and cultures, they have no business using the word 'ethical'.
b) Europe will only need more fossil fuels for a short period, likely less than 2 years, as they source replacement energy from renewables first, and reduced fossil fuel demand from closer and more reliable sources, like oil and gas producers in the middle east.
c) Canadian oil is expensive by world standards, and heavy oil requiring more refining energy than light and medium crudes available closer to Europe today. Canadian oil can't compete on price without massive subsidies from Canadian taxpayers (already part of 'business as usual').
d) Alberta can't deliver in time. Alberta is landlocked. It doesn't have the refining capacity required to make the gasoline, oil, and diesel fuel customers want. It will take 10-20 years to build more refining capacity, and the past 3 decades show Alberta has no interest in that. So they have to ship to refineries, mostly in the U.S. which can actually refine the heavy bitumen crude mixed with diluents. They don't have the delivery capacity. Alberta and Canada's previous Prime Minister have soured relations with the U.S., which has slowed the approvals and building of Keystone XL. They have similarly pissed off Quebec, which along with shaky financials, forced proponents to withdraw their Energy East proposed pipeline. Trans Mountain XL is such a financial fiasco that even the Canadian government - the world oil industry's subsidizer-in-chief - wants to wash their hands of it - if $21 billion dollars too late. No private sector investor has appeared to pick up the project and carry on. Even if any of those actually moves forward, it is certainly five years before any of them could deliver any fossil fuel to Europe from increased production, and probably more than a decade.
e) There is a way Canada could deliver more fossil fuel to Europe within a few months. By dramatically reducing demand for those fuels in Canada and sending the saved fuel to Europe. Somehow, that doesn't appear as part of the Alberta plan. Which tells me that the Canadian oil industry isn't really concerned about Ukraine and applying pressure to Russia, but only in increasing overall demand for their product on a global scale. Exactly what humans can't afford if we hope to survive as a species beyond the end of this century.
We have the solutions we need at hand, we just can't bring ourselves to use them. In Europe, wind turbines and photovoltaic projects could be built and delivering electricity within a year. That additional electricity could be used to power heat pumps for heating and cooling buildings, mass transit and electric cars and trucks, displacing fossil fuels and their emissions.
What we really have a shortage of is rational thinking by elected leaders and a lack of resolve to actually solve the problem at hand, even though it would reduce costs and improve the environment and our health, and bring climate change acceleration to a halt.

2022.03.28 One of the big problems in stopping climate change is that our tax dollars are used to accelerate it

B.C.’s largest fossil fuel subsidy cost the province over $1B last year (National Observer)
That's over $1 Billion from a single loophole in a single province which essentially produces no oil.

2022.03.17 Ottawa pours more money into next-gen nuclear tech

The most optimistic forecasts for SMRs is that they COULD be ready for construction in the early 2030s. (National Observer) They won't be. Even if they were, it's too late for significant actions on climate change - we need to have implemented the changes by 2030 per the IPCC's latest reports, not just be hoping to start them. I have been following SMRs since - ready for it? - 1980 - when the SLOWPOKE was already a real thing. I wrote about them in 2005-6 in my award-winning book, The Emperor's New Hydrogen Economy. They're a distraction, and they don't solve any of the existing problems of nuclear energy (dealing with spent fuel, high costs for construction, fuel production, operations, possible ionizing radiation releases,creation of feedstock for nuclear weapons ...)

If the objective is to provide remote communities with reliable, zero-emissions energy sources, PV panels, wind turbines and batteries are available off-the-shelf today and will cost a lot less per community than SMRs. SMRs are a distraction and delaying tactic intended to delay action on moving away from fossil fuels in the short term.

2022.03.05 The fossil fuel sector is always quick to point out the cost of combatting climate change

but since the UK's Stern Report, very few get the spotlight to point out the costs of not combatting climate change.
What the new IPCC report says climate change could — and is — costing Canadians (CBC)
(the report - again)

2022.03.04 Toyota subsidiary Hino admits use of fraudulent emissions data

The use of fraudulent data has been ongoing since at least 2016, with the company having sold at least 115,526 vehicles with engines certified by the government based on rigged data (Market Screener)

2022.03.03 Before we get excited about shipping CNG to Europe, how about some reality?

Yes, Canadian Conservative politicians and their puppet masters in the international oil and gas industry will hate this. Thinking is hard for them; wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on new oil and gas infrastructure and more subsidies is easy. There is a current war in Ukraine, started by the oil-enriched kleptocrats in Russia, led by Vladimir Putin. Putin wants to use gas supplies at the end of winter as leverage to force Europe to let him have Ukraine. The democracies in Europe, to their credit and my surprise, appear to be willing to undergo some possible hardship to assist Ukraine in a war imposed on them and where they are outnumbered and outgunned.

The fossil fuel sector has an easy answer, just get more gas from another source. Bring it in using CNG ships which are filled at loading terminals in the U.S. and Canada, and off-load it at receiving terminals in Europe, starting next week. Easy-peasy - problem solved.

There might be a couple of small issues to be addressed before we open the valves on this 'solution'.

Those ships don't exist, or at least not enough of them. The loading terminals don't exist in quantity, and those on the drawing board are mostly on the west coast of North America, that is, on the wrong ocean. The receiving terminals don't exist in the right places. The existing pipelines are backwards to what will be required. Currently, the fat end of the pipe is in Russia and branches into smaller and smaller pipes as they move west. The CNG tankers will arrive at the west end, at the small pipes, and need to pump east.

Building that infrastructure (ships, pipelines on the producer side, compression and loading terminals, unloading terminals, rebuild of the pipelines on the consumer side) will not happen next week; possibly next decade. Europe needs a solution long before that.

There are solutions that can be implemented in a much shorter time scale for producing heat and electricity. Renewables, conservation, energy efficiency, battery storage and in the short term, ramping up old coal and nuclear which was being ramped down and mothballed.

Here's the International Energy Agency's (IEA) take. Europe doesn't need a longer supply line or to simply switch puppet-masters. They need to establish energy independence to protect their political independence.

And there's still that pesky issue of climate change which demands that we move away from fossil fuels within this decade if we're planning to survive the looming crisis of catastrophic climate change.

2022.03.02 Fossil fuels are killing the planet. So why don’t we stop using them?

Because our taxes are used to massively subsidize oil in Canada, so alternatives can't compete in a fair market. (National Observer)

You can find many earlier postings (going back to year 2000) related to climate change at:
Keith's List Archive and
the Sustainable Biofuel List Mail Archive.

I present a lot of information in this blog and on this website. If you need some help sorting through the noise level and getting a forward-looking, proactive approach to climate change for your business, I can do that work for you via my consulting business. Contact