Carbon Taxes Pound Canada Economy

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Canadian Inflation Jumps As Carbon Taxes Come Into Force

Globe and Mail:
Canadian inflation spiked to its highest rate in more than two years in January, as new carbon taxes in Alberta and Ontario fuelled a surge in gasoline prices.

Statistics Canada reported that the consumer price index was up 2.1 per cent year over year in January, the fastest pace since October, 2014, and up sharply from 1.5 per cent in December. It said gasoline prices were up 20.6 per cent from a year earlier, the biggest increase since September, 2011. The increase reflected the introduction of a carbon tax in Alberta and a cap-and-trade carbon pricing system in Ontario, both of which came into effect on Jan. 1, as well as higher crude-oil prices, which lifted fuel costs nationwide.

From StatsCan April Report:

Transportation costs rose 4.2% over the 12-month period ending in April, after increasing 4.6% in March. This deceleration was led by the purchase of passenger vehicles index, which rose less on a year-over-year basis in April than in March. Gasoline prices posted a 15.9% year-over-year increase in April, slightly larger than the 15.2% rise registered in March.

Losses persist in oil and gas

The oil and gas extraction industry reported an operating loss of $2.2 billion in the fourth quarter, down from the $3.3 billion loss in the third quarter. This was the eighth consecutive quarterly loss for the oil and gas extraction industry.

And that is just for starters.

Get ready for Trudeau’s carbon tax on everything

Toronto Sun:
The Trudeau Liberals are moving forward with their national carbon tax scheme, or, what Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall calls “one of the largest tax increases in Canadian history.”

In typical governing fashion, the Liberals are trying to downplay the devastating economic consequences of the tax. They’re trying to disguise the very fact that this is a tax hike.

It’s not a carbon tax, it’s a “behaviour-changing measure,” said one government official.

His plan will force the provinces to tax each tonne of carbon emitted, as well as to hike taxes on gasoline by at least 11 cents per litre. Keep in mind that taxes on gasoline already make up 36% of the existing price at the pump.

That isn’t enough for our tax-hungry government, so they want to impose a 25% tax hike on fuel.

The whole scheme is designed to subsidize so-called clean energy.

But compared to the world’s largest sources of carbon emissions, places that coincidentally have the lowest environmental standards – China, Russia, India – Canada’s entire economy would be considered “clean energy.”

Next to the world’s biggest emitters, we’re an environmental marvel.

Despite being an advanced and developed country, and having some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves, Canada only makes up 1.6% of global emissions.

Any reductions in Canadian emissions caused by the Trudeau tax grab will immediately be erased by China’s booming coal industry and its refusal to impose the kind of job-killing carbon tax schemes being sold by the Trudeau Liberals.

There will be no positive impact on the environment, but the effect on our pocketbook will be concrete and measurable.

Figures vary by household and province, but by 2022, it’s estimated the average Canadian family will face a carbon tax bill of about $2,500 per year.

There’s a reason a carbon tax is called ‘a tax on everything.’

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May 21, 2017 at 02:52AM

First magnetic field detected “outside” of a galaxy

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Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, the largest astronomical project in the world –
Magellanic Clouds near top of image [credit: NASA / Ames]

It’s unimaginably vast: astronomers say ‘this structure is a 75,000 light-year long filament of gas and dust’. Trying to separate out the effects of gravity and magnetism here should be an interesting challenge.

A magnetic field appears to span the space between the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the two dwarf galaxies being consumed by our Milky Way Galaxy, reports Sky & Telescope via Sott.net.

For stargazers in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s easy to forget that the Milky Way is actively consuming two dwarf galaxies. Those in the Southern Hemisphere have a front row seat to watch our galaxy wreak havoc on the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC).

But there’s more to the story — the dwarfs are not only gravitationally interacting with the Milky Way but with each other as well.

The gravitational effects evident from these interactions can tell us a lot about the history and evolution of these galaxies as well as the environments surrounding them, but gravity isn’t the only force at work here. Magnetic fields play a role as well, one astronomers are still trying to puzzle out.

Now, for the first time, researchers using the Australia Telescope Compact Array radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia, have detected a magnetic field in the space between the Magellanic Clouds.

Called the Magellanic Bridge, this structure is a 75,000 light-year long filament of gas and dust that stretches from the LMC to the SMC. These results are published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (full text available).

Detecting the Invisible

Magnetic fields can be found within and around planets and stars but also on the scales of galaxies. We’ve detected galactic magnetic fields in both our own galaxy and in several other disk galaxies, but an extragalactic magnetic field is something else.

This is the first magnetic field detected “outside” of a galaxy.

Continued here.

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May 20, 2017 at 11:57PM

China Claims Methane Hydrates Breakthrough May Lead To Global Energy Revolution

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
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China is talking up its achievement of mining flammable ice for the first time from underneath the South China Sea.

Methane Hydrates: China’s Real South China Sea Goal?

The fuel-hungry country has been pursuing the energy source, located at the bottom of oceans and in polar regions, for nearly two decades. China’s minister of land and resources, Jiang Daming, said Thursday that the successful collection of the frozen fuel was “a major breakthrough that may lead to a global energy revolution,” according to state media.

Experts agree that flammable ice could be a game changer for the energy industry, similar to the U.S. shale boom. But they caution that big barriers — both technological and environmental — need to be cleared to build an industry around the frozen fuel, which is also known as gas hydrate.

China, the world’s largest energy consumer, isn’t the first country to make headway with flammable ice. Japan drilled into it in the Pacific and extracted gas in 2013 — and then did so again earlier this month. The U.S. government has its own long-running research program into the fuel.

The world’s resources of flammable ice — in which gas is stored in cages of water molecules — are vast. Gas hydrates are estimated to hold more carbon than all the world’s other fossil fuels combined, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

An image from Chinese state television shows gas extracted from flammable ice burning in the South China Sea.

And it’s densely packed: one cubic foot of flammable ice holds 164 cubic feet of regular natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Chinese state news agency Xinhua says that makes the fuel a strong contender to replace regular oil and natural gas. But like any fossil fuel, flammable ice raises significant environmental concerns.

Experts worry about the release of methane, a superpotent greenhouse gas with 25 times as much global warming potential as carbon dioxide. And although burning natural gas is cleaner than coal, it still creates carbon emissions.

But commercial production is unlikely in the next three years due to high costs, potential environmental concerns and technological barriers, the analysts said in a research note.

“If there is a real breakthrough,” they wrote, “it could be as significant as the shale revolution in the United States. Under such a bull case scenario, we’d expect a significant increase in offshore exploration and production activities.”

Full post

see also The Next Energy Revolution

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

May 20, 2017 at 11:30PM

NOAA Forecast: El Nothing?

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
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The Climate Prediction Center has backed off its forecast for a weak or moderate El Nino this winter. The NOAA forecast is now for neutral conditions: the infamous El Nothing.

At this time of the year, it’s understandable as these predictions often change and here’s why.

We’re in the so-called “Spring Predictability Barrier.” In spring, the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is often in a transition from one phase to another. For example, an El Nino condition could be decaying and passing through neutral condition to a La Nina phase, or vice-versa. Overall, at this time of the year, El Nino or La Nina events are notoriously difficult to predict.

Of course, another factor is, as you get closer to winter, the models become more accurate because there’s less time for inaccurate oceanographic and atmospheric data to be amplified at model initialization. In this period of the year, you can either shake your fist at the sky in frustration or as astrophysicist Dr. Weymann of Atascadero would say, “Many climate scientists think the most reliable strategy is ‘WAS’ (wait and see).”

As the temperatures and currents of the Pacific Ocean change, so does our weather. Changing conditions in the Pacific can trigger El Nino and its sister, La Nina, which can actively influence our weather — either wet or dry. Neutral conditions typically don’t produce any reliable seasonal rainfall predictions along the Central Coast.

Since 1950, NOAA has used sea surface temperatures (SST) in a central equatorial region of the Pacific Ocean called Nino 3.4 as the standard for classifying El Nino (warmer-than-normal SST) and La Nina (cooler-than-normal SST) events. The fortune-telling SST cycles in Nino 3.4 are categorized by the amount they deviate from the average SST. In other words, an anomaly.

A weak El Nino is classified as an SST anomaly between 0.5 and 0.9 degrees Celsius; a moderate El Nino is an anomaly of 1.0 to 1.4 degrees Celsius; and a strong El Nino ranges from 1.5 to 1.9 degrees Celsius. A very strong El Nino anomaly is anything above 2.0 degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Neutral conditions — El Nothing or El Nada —ranges between plus 0.5 and minus 0.5 degrees Celsius anomaly levels, or the sector between El Nino and La Nina.

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May 20, 2017 at 07:56PM