HANSEN: Game Over for the Climate

[Oscar]

HANSEN (2012): Game Over for the Climate

[ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opini ... .html?_r=0 ]

By JAMES HANSEN Op-Ed Contributor Published: May 9, 2012

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.

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[ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opini ... .html?_r=0 ]

[Oscar]

Keystone XL gets environmental OK from U.S. State Dept.

[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/keyston ... -1.2518271 ]

Report not the final step in the years-long battle, but could prove crucial

CBC News Posted: Jan 31, 2014 7:16 AM ET Last Updated: Jan 31, 2014 6:57 PM ET

The U.S. State Department gave a vote of confidence to the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, saying in a report that it has no major environmental objections to the construction of the megaproject.

The report says development of the massive pipeline to move oil from Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast won't significantly increase the rate of oil extraction and release an unacceptable level of greenhouse gases.

That had been a key hurdle standing in the way of the project's approval. Calgary-based TransCanada has been seeking approval for the 1,800-kilometre, $7-billion project for several years.

Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver welcomed the report's findings and said he hoped for a speedy approval of the project.

"This is the fifth federal study on the environmental impact of the Keystone XL pipeline. Each previous one has stated that building Keystone XL would not adversely affect the environment," Oliver said.

He noted that the report says that not building the project would actually lead to the release of as much as 28 to 42 per cent more greenhouse gases, because of energy consumed moving the same volume of oil via other means, such as by rail, trucks or barges.

"The benefits to the U.S. and Canada are clear. We await a timely decision on this project," Oliver said.

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[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/keyston ... -1.2518271 ]

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[ http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/map-pipeline// ]

On mobile? U.S. State Department Keystone XL report

[ https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentclo ... report.pdf ]