National Energy Board (NEB) – Implications of Proposed Changes: A Review

via Friends of Science Calgary
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Many Canadians have been unaware of the work of the National Energy Board (NEB) since its establishment in 1959, as a group of highly skilled, very technical people with a mandate to carefully review proposals for national energy infrastructure, such as pipelines and power lines, and oil/gas imports/exports, with a view to national safety, resilience and economic interests.

Recently various activists and environmental groups claimed the NEB process was flawed and demanded a review.  Now there are proposals for a significant revision to the existing operation.  The proposed processes will take much longer for approvals, will incorporate less tangible, less measurable considerations such as climate change, and much of the focus on the present very important technical and long-term performance evaluations appear to be taking second place to these less tangible considerations.  

Robert Lyman posed the question “Can Canada Survive Climate Change Policy?” at his Calgary presentation on May 9, 2017. The proposed changes to the NEB are a related complication. Canadians must look at the highly competitive global markets and evaluate whether making infrastructure projects more difficult to approve, in a process that is apparently less technical, is in the best economic interests of the nation, even as Canada is already an acknowledged leader in environmental management.  Ottawa energy policy expert, Robert Lyman, has contributed the following overview.  This summary is the first of a multi-part series on this topic. – Friends of Science Society

THE REPORT OF THE EXPERT PANEL ON THE MODERNIZATION

OF THE NATIONAL ENERGY BOARD

Contributed by Robert Lyman © May 17, 2017

This document is intended to provide a summary of the key elements of the May 15, 2017 report of the panel appointed by the current Trudeau Government with a mandate to offer recommendations that would “modernize” the National Energy Board, and specifically would “position the NEB as a modern, efficient, and effective energy regulator and regain public trust”.

 

This summary will focus especially on the policy and regulatory system that would result if the panel’s recommendations were accepted and implemented, not on the rationale offered by the panel. As introduction, however, it should be noted that the panel presented its conclusions as a product of its cross-Canada consultations and as part of “a comprehensive vision for the future of the energy transmission infrastructure regulation” in Canada. Notably, the report recommended:

 

• Placing energy infrastructure regulation within the framework of a national energy strategy that furthers Canada’s climate change emissions reduction commitments;
• Significantly increasing the role and authority of indigenous people (“creating a nation-to-nation relationship”) in all phases of energy policy, infrastructure regulation, and lifelong oversight of energy infrastructure;
• Radically increasing the scale and scope of stakeholder engagement in all phases of energy project regulation; and
• Increasing the transparency and openness of all licensing processes and follow-up actions by the regulator.

 

To achieve this vision, the panel recommends the following:

 

• Replacement of the National Energy Board with an entirely new policy and regulatory review system
• Recommendation that, as the first stage in that system, the government of Canada develop an energy strategy that “reconciles economic, social and environmental (particularly climate change) goals in a way that can meaningfully inform decision making and frame the context for debates about whether, for example, a proposed energy infrastructure project aligns with Canada’s big-picture goals for economic, social and environmental progress”.
• Establishment of the first step in project review as a one-year process in which the Governor in Council (i.e. the federal Cabinet), after extensive consultations with aboriginals and analysis by a new Major Projects Management Office in Natural Resources Canada of its strategic acceptability, would determine whether the project “aligned with the national interest”;
• Creation of a new Canadian Energy Transmission Commission (CETC) to replace the National Energy Board. This board, along with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEA), would evaluate “the potential risks of a project to Indigenous peoples (based on robust consultation), the environment, and human health and safety”. This process would be conducted by a five-person panel of Hearing Commissioners at least one of whom is indigenous), composed of two commissioners from the CETC, two commissioners from the CEA, and a fifth panel member. The environmental assessment would take place under CEA authority. The panel expects this to be a process that would take one year.
• The CETC would then examine all the “technical issues” related to the pipeline and whether it could operate safely and securely (there is no mention of regulating safety, engineering, economic viability or rates). This process would take another two years and, if satisfied, the Joint Panel would have authority to grant or deny licences.
• Creation of a new, independent Canadian Energy Information Agency, separate from policy and regulatory functions, to provide “information and analysis for policy makers and the public”.
• The CETC play a major role in “keeping the land pure”, by regulating the safety and integrity of pipelines and electricity transmission lines during their operation, recognizing that “as we reduce our global dependence on fossil fuels we can expect the number of new major pipeline projects to dwindle…Overall, the goal shared by the CETC and industry is an ambitious one: zero incidents and zero releases.”
• End of Summary.  Look for additional posting on this topic in the coming days.

Additional reading:

Moving Oil by Pipeline: Examining The Facts

http://ift.tt/2qsrvHa

Moving Oil by Tanker in Canada: The Facts

http://ift.tt/2qsGgtf

via Friends of Science Calgary http://ift.tt/2on3Vep

May 17, 2017 at 07:07AM

Did Sir David King Lie To Parliamentary Committee?

via Climate Change Dispatch
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Last month, I looked at the Sir David King’s evidence to Parliament in 2004. This was when he stated: I will not spend too much time on this, but if we look back in time for the globe we probably have to go back 55 million years before we find carbon dioxide levels as high […]

via Climate Change Dispatch http://ift.tt/2jXMFWN

May 17, 2017 at 06:58AM

As Polar Bear Numbers Increase, GWPF Calls For Re-assessment Of Endangered Species Status

via The SPPI Blog
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Source: Global Warming Policy Foundation

On the occasion of International Polar Bear Day, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is calling on the U.S. Administration to re-assess the ‘endangered species’ status of polar bears. 

On May 15, 2008, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service listed the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The listing is based on the assumption that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat.

In a GWPF video released today, Dr Susan Crockford, a Canadian wildlife expert, documents the latest findings about rising polar bear numbers.

In 2005, the official global polar bear estimate was about 22,500.
Since 2005, however, the estimated global polar bear population has risen by more than 30% to about 30,000 bears, far and away the highest estimate in more than 50 years.

A growing number of observational studies have documented that polar bears are thriving, despite shrinking summer sea ice.

By September 2007 sea ice extent was about 43% less than it had been in 1979 – a decline not expected until mid-century, and every year after was almost as low, or lower.

Yet no more drowned polar bears were documented, no more bears than normal starved to death, no unusual spikes in cannibalism occurred, and not a single polar bear population was wiped out.

New scientific evidence suggests that loss of summer sea ice, regardless of the cause, is not a major risk for polar bear survival. 

“A thorough external review of the polar bear status issue is now required –  not only because it’s the right thing to do but because it may help restore public support for science and conservation,” Dr Crockford said.

via The SPPI Blog http://sppiblog.org

May 17, 2017 at 06:54AM

A Global Warming Surprise

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Source: American thinker

by Fred Singer

Exploring some of the intricacies of GW [Global Warming] science can lead to surprising results that have major consequences.  In a recent invited talk at the Heartland Institute’s ICCC-12 [Twelfth International Conference on Climate Change], I investigated three important topics:

1. Inconsistencies in the surface temperature record.

2. Their explanation as artifacts arising from the misuse of data.

3.  Thereby explaining the failure of IPCC to find credible evidence for anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

A misleading graph

In the iconic picture of the global surface temperature of the 20th century [fig 1, top]  one can discern two warming intervals — in the initial decades (1910-42) and in the final decades, 1977 to 2000.

Fig 1  20^th century temps;  top—global; bottom– US

Although these two trends look similar, they are really  quite different:  the initial warming is genuine, but the later warming is not.   What a surprise!  I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘fake,’ but it just does not exist; I try to demonstrate this difference as an artifact of the data-gathering process, by comparing with several independent data sets covering similar time intervals.

The later warming is contradicted by every available data set, as follows:

**the surface record for the ‘lower 48’ [US] shows a much lower trend; [see fig 1, bottom]; presumably there is better control over the placement of weather-stations and their thermometers;

**the trend of global sea surface temp [SST] is much less; with 1995 temp values nearly equal to those of 1942 [according to Gouretski and Kennedy, as published in Geophysical Research Letters in 2012];

** likewise, the trend of night-time marine air-temperatures [NMAT], measured with thermometers on ship decks, according to data from J Kennedy, Hadley Centre, UK

** atmospheric temperature trends are uniformly much lower and close to zero (during 1979-1997), whether measured with balloon-borne radiosondes or with microwave sounding units [MSU] aboard weather satellites [see fig 8 in ref 2]

** compatible data on solar activity that show nothing unusual happening.  Interestingly, the solar data had been assembled for a quite different purpose – namely, to disprove the connection between cosmic rays and climate change [see here fig 14 of ref 2], assuming that the late-century warming was real.  In the absence of such warming, as I argue here, this attempted critique of the cosmic-ray–climate connection collapses.

** proxy data also show near-zero trends, whether from tree rings or ice cores, as noted about 20 years ago [see fig 16 in ref 1 and figs 2 and 3 of ref 2; plus those that may have been withheld by Michael Mann].  [If you look carefully at Mann’s original 1998 paper in Nature or subsequent copies, you will note that his proxy temps cease suddenly in 1979 and are replaced by temps from thermometers from CRU-EAU, the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University. This substitution not only supplies the ‘blade’ of Mann’s hockey-stick but enables the claim of IPCC-AR3 [2001] that the 20^th  century was the warmest in the past 1000 years, surpassing even the high temps of the Medieval Warm Period. In Climategate e-mails this substitution was referred to as “Mike’s Nature trick.  I can’t help wondering if Mann’ s original post-1979 proxy data showed warming at all; perhaps that has some bearing on why Mann has withheld these data; it could have killed the blade and spoiled the IPCC claim.]

On the other hand, the early warming [1910-40] is supported by many proxy data – including temps derived from tree rings, ice cores, etc;  unfortunately, we could not find any temperature data of the upper troposphere.  However, I bet they would have shown an amplified warming trend – a hot spot.

A Digression on Hotspot [HSp] and Hockey stick [HSt]

‘Hotspot’ refers to an enhanced temp trend in the tropical upper troposphere [UT]; it is produced by convection of latent energy through water vapor [WV] and is the dominant agent for heating the UT.  In IPCC-AR2 [1996], BD Santer mistakenly identified the HSp as the fingerprint for GH [greenhouse] warming, which has led to much confusion in the technical literature, fostering the mistaken claim that the HSp owes its existence to tropospheric CO2.  But according to textbooks, it is merely an amplification of any temp trend at the surface through the ‘moist’ atmospheric lapse rate.   It surely existed during 1910-42 but we lack data to prove it.  Virtual absence of the HSp during 1979-97 [fig 8 of ref 2 ] implies a near-zero surface trend in that interval.  This observation also disproves the AGW hypothesis of IPCC-AR2 [1996] that led to the Kyoto Protocol.

Mann’s construction of his hockeystick graph [often referred to as ‘Mike’s Nature trick’ was explained earlier [see above].

This recital of data should suffice to convince alarmists and climate skeptics alike that the late 20^th-century global warming does not exist.  We should note, however, that both IPCC-AR4 [2007] and AR5 [2013]  rely on such (non-existing) warming in trying to prove that its cause is anthropogenic.

Explaining the climate-trend artifact

Now we tackle, using newly available data, what may have caused the fictitious temperature trend in the latter decades of the 20^th century.

We first look at Ocean data: as seen from fig 2, there was a great shift in the way Sea Surface Temperatures [SSTs] were measured;

Source: JJ kennedy et al. JGR 2011

Fig 2  Sources of SST data:  Note the drastic changes between 1980 and 2000 as global buoys increasingly replaced bucket sampling of SST – with also important geographic changes.

Data from floating buoys increased from zero to 60% between 1980 and 2000.  But such buoys are heated directly by the sun, as indicated in the cartoon of fig 3, showing a floating buoy in the solar-heated top layer and unheated engine inlet water in lower ocean layers;  this combination leads to a spurious rise in SST when the data are mixed together.

Fig 3    Cartoon showing floating buoy in solar-heated layer and inlet for engine cooling water

In merging them, we must note that buoy data are global, while bucket and inlet temps are perforce confined to [mostly commercial] shipping routes.   Nor do we know the ocean depths that buckets sample; inlet depths depend on ship type and degree of loading.  Disentangling this mess requires data details that are not available.  About all we can demonstrate is a distinct diurnal variation in the buoy temps.

The land data have problems of their own.  During the same decades, quite independently, there was a severe reduction in ‘superfluous’ (mostly) rural stations [fig 12 in ref 2] — unless they were located at airports.   As seen from fig 4, the number of stations decreased drastically in the 1990’s

Fig 4   Weather stations at airports [Source: NOAA data]

[fig12 of ref 2], but the number at airports declined less sharply, leading to a major rise in the fraction of reporting stations at airports  [according to basic NOAA data]

This led to a huge increase, from 35% to 80%, in the fraction of airport weather stations — producing a spurious temperature increase from all the construction of runways and buildings — hard to calculate in detail.  About all we can claim is a general increase in air traffic, about 5% per year worldwide [see fig 19 in ref 1].

We have, however, MSU data for the lower atmosphere over both ocean and land; they show little difference; so we can assume that both land data and ocean data contribute about equally to the fictitious surface trend reported for 1977 to 1997.

The absence of a warming trend removes all of IPCC’s evidence for AGW.  Both  IPCC-AR4 [2007] and IPCC-AR5 [2013] rely on the  1979-1997 warming trend to demonstrate anthropogenic global warming [see chapters on ‘Attribution’ in their respective final reports].

Obviously, if there is no warming trend, these demonstrations fail – and so do their proofs for AGW.

Ref 1:  Singer,S.F.  Hot Talk, Cold Science.  Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, 1997 and 1999.

Ref 2:  Singer,S.F. Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate. Heartland Inst, Chicago, 2008 http://ift.tt/2qYn33C

 

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May 17, 2017 at 06:47AM