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Science News

Canada, US and Kyoto 42

Posted by michael from the northern-exposure dept.
ambisinistral writes "The Commission for Environmental Cooperation, established under NAFTA to monitor North American environmental trends, has released their annual report. This article reports that Canadian polluters are doing worse than their U.S. counterparts. From the article, "Air pollutants released by Canadian industries rose 7 per cent from 1998 to 2000, while they fell by 8 per cent in the United States." This is of particular interest since Canada is a signatory member of the Kyoto accord. However, as this article reports, there are pressures inside Canada to withdraw from the Treaty."
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Canada, US and Kyoto More

Canada, US and Kyoto

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  • Hold up... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Justen ( 517232 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @01:05PM (#5752938) Homepage Journal
    Don't be down on Canada just yet.

    Canada signed [ec.gc.ca] Kyoto back in the Spring of 1998. Canada's goal is based on a 6% reduction from 1990 levels by 2012. (It should be noted that a 6% reduction is a massive reduction.)

    Unfortunately, they don't have to begin meeting that target until 2008. (There are reasons for this: upgrading their entire non-hyrdo power infrastructure, strengthening their already tight auto regulations, etc.)

    So, until then, unfortunately, industry is taking advantage of their last shot to try to murder the environment, before their January 1, 2008 death sentence...

    justen

    (It's also worth noting that even with the increase since 1998, adjusted for population difference, Canada produces a quarter less pollution than the United States does.)

    • Re:Hold up... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bofkentucky ( 555107 )
      I wish the hippies down here would let us build cleaner energy sources, but Nuke fission and Hydro plants are even more taboo than fossil fuel generation. I just wonder if they will protest the first fusion plant, the absolute cleanest source of energy we can hope to generate.

      • Re:Hold up... (Score:4, Informative)

        by PD ( 9577 ) <slashdotlinux@pdrap.org> on Thursday April 17, 2003 @01:18PM (#5753041) Homepage Journal
        Wind power is shaping up to be the best alternative. There was a recent article - maybe it was on /. but I don't remember - about the new turbines, and how more megawatts of wind generating capacity has been installed recently than all the installations in the last 50 years.

        Even the price is approaching parity with oil and gas fired generated, and will probably drop below. When that happens, it'll really explode. So, at least until someone posts a followup explaining why I'm full of crap, it looks like wind power might quickly become dominant in the US. We've got the vast open spaces, new windmills are more efficient, quieter, and safer for wildlife, we've got the wind, so it's one of those lucky convergences of technology, politics, and demand.

        • The problem with wind power is that the animal rights activists hate it because it will still kill a non-zero number of (possibly retarded) birds.

          I still doubt that wind will ever approach the cheapness that is nuclear power...

          • Re:Hold up... (Score:2, Insightful)

            by PD ( 9577 )
            Nuclear power isn't that cheap because the plants are expensive to build and run. Wind power has fewer issues.

          • maybe you can put the turbines indoors?

            that is only partially a joke. I'm sure someone can create a wire mesh canopy that keeps birds (and humans) out, but does not slow down the wind velocity.
            • Any 'wire mesh canopy' that keeps out birds is gonna gather them up as debris on the wire mesh. Or is there some wiping mechanism involved?

              Either way, wind power is really really noisy. It's a major NIMBY issue.

        • Re:Hold up... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by bofkentucky ( 555107 )
          My understanding is that wind works great in certain places, but that it is loud, ugly, and kills birds.

          How do you account for changing weather paterns, is the Earth becoming more or less windy?

          Meeting rising demand is also an issue, with fossil fuels you pour more oil/coal/gas into the engines, a nuke plant removes a couple of control rods, or a hydro plant diverts more water through the turbines, how does a wind plant increase production on a day when its 105F in Chicago and 20 elderly are dead by 10
          • I read that the bird killing thing is mainly fixed by the newest turbines. The blades are large and don't turn fast. They use their huge size to slowly turn a lot of generators to generate a lot of power, rather than turning a few generators very quickly as the smaller windmills do.

            The rising demand issue is met just like they always have. Bring more generators online. If you need more because of heat wave, fire up the standby gas plants. If you need more because of a long-term rise in consumption, you bui

          • Transmission lines are not a problem. My power comes mostly from North Dakota, where my power coop partially owns a few coal power plants. They then transmit all that power a few hundred miles to Minneapolis. I'd guess that this is a better way to transmit that energy than what a power company not far from me does: take in about 20 TRAINS of coal per day, every day to run a coal plant about 15 miles from my house. I don't know how to compare the energy used to move a train compared to what can be extra

            • My point is that wind isn't very energy dense compared to fossil fuel or nuke generation, to further stress that lowered potential with a 5% loss on a 300-500 mile trip from generator to home would decrease the viability of wind generation. Small scale solar and wind work well for residential households, but to get the juice for manufacturing (and the electric cars we are supposed to be driving), you are going to need more than a 100ft^2 solar array and a windmill at the momment. Neighboorhood association
        • Wind power is shaping up to be the best alternative. There was a recent article - maybe it was on /. but I don't remember - about the new turbines, and how more megawatts of wind generating capacity has been installed recently than all the installations in the last 50 years.

          The problem with wind power is that energy density is low (requiring large plant areas) and the energy source is both very unreliable and very specific to location.

          My best bet is on solar. For small-scale generation, thin-film photovo
          • Those who support Solar, Wind etc as electrical energy sources fail completely to understand the problem. We could save 1/2 the energy if we did not use electricity at all. If we were to directly burn the fuel or move the mills etc without electricity the energy would be more efficiently used. (It is a fact) The reason we use electricity is that we can turn it on and off when we want to and we can do it far away from the driver of the net. This way we don't have soot from lamps in our houses etc. While
            • Those who support Solar, Wind etc as electrical energy sources fail completely to understand the problem. We could save 1/2 the energy if we did not use electricity at all. If we were to directly burn the fuel or move the mills etc without electricity the energy would be more efficiently used.

              Electricity is very easily stored, transmitted, and converted into other types of energy. Fuels are easily stored and moved around, but are not as easily converted; the best fuel-burning motor you can build will have
    • So Canada, with a population roughly 1/10th of the US, "produces a quarter less pollution than the United States does" ??? This can't be right; that means the US pollution per capita is 7% of Canadas!
      • I believe the poster said that regardless of population size(ie. if Canada was scaled up in population, or the US was scaled down in population) Canada produces less polution. Another way to look at it, per person Canada produces 3/4 the polution per each US person.

  • Depends what you measure... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Phronesis ( 175966 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @01:31PM (#5753148)
    While Canada's generation of pollutants is increasing, it's still producing less greenhouse gases than the United States. From John H. Walsh's 2001 carbon dioxide fact sheet [inter.net]:

    Tons of atmospheric carbon generated per capita (2001):

    • Canada: 4.4
    • United States: 5.9
    • European Union: 2.5
    • China: 0.58
    So even though the US greenhouse gas production is dropping by 1.7% per year and China's is rising by 4.3% per year, China will take a long time to catch up to the U.S.

    Also, I would point out that while Canada's generation of all pollutants rose by about 7%, its production of greenhouse gases dropped by about 2.2%, more than the US's did.

    Note also there is too much focus on the Kyoto treaty. This treaty is a dog. It would not do more than slow global warming by a few decades.

    • "This treaty is a dog. It would not do more than slow global warming by a few decades."

      Try a few years.

      By 2008-12 Kyoto would decrease the global CO2 output by 5.2 percent, if developing nations, which cannot be bound by Kyoto, keep CO2 output at 1990 levels. A number of computer models estimate that by 2100 the average temperature would by .15 C less than if Kyoto was not implemented and global sea rise would be only 2.5 cm less than if nothing was done . Kyoto would slow global warming by only six ye
    • The data on China is old. China is not pumping it out faster than the USA and is Exempt from Kyoto as is India who also is doing this. Coal Tonnage for China now is something in the order of 4 Billion Tons a year USA is about .4 Billion. This was expressedly permitted under Kyoto. NOTE: look at www.intellicast.com on the topic of Global Warming. The data is simply not there. This winter for example 2002-2003 found the greatest Northern hemisphere snow cover ever.

  • We Stink! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jo42 ( 227475 )
    Our pollution index could be dropped drastically by taking offline a handful of polluters, starting with the Nanticoke coal powered power plant.

    If you aren't concerned with pollution, then you are part of the problem.

  • Pollution is not less with Kyoto (Score:4, Informative)

    by ManDude ( 231569 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @01:45PM (#5753251)
    This is messed up. The problems found in the report are not about greenhouse gasses, it's about direct pollution, like sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, lead production and dumping. The discussion about coal fire plants in the report is not regarding carbon dioxide output (which would be considered clean), but rather all the shit that creates smog that kills and acid rain.

    I am not sure how Kyoto and the report can so easily be put together?

  • A little dated (Score:4, Informative)

    by SimJockey ( 13967 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @03:34PM (#5754262) Homepage Journal
    The submitter should have looked at the article on Canada pulling out of Kyoto a little closer. It is from May '02, we have ratified our commitment in parliament since then so really, pulling out isn't really on the radar anymore.

  • Canada will probably leave (Score:3, Informative)

    by t482 ( 193197 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @03:52PM (#5754406) Homepage
    1) Canada is a lot bigger than any of the other countries signing. (transport is the largest source of polutants).
    2) Canada is a lot colder
    3) Canada has a lot more trees and seaweed per capita than other countries ( more credits).
    4) Canada benefits more than other countries from global warming

    We WANT some C02 - just not the amount that cars give off and all the other crap they produce. The earth's atmosphere now contains 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1 % argon and much less than 1% carbon dioxide. If we were to burn all the coal, oil and trees on the earth it would almost hit 2%( heard this on quirks and quarks).

    And since the major requirements of photosynthesis are sunlight, water and Carbon Dioxide green plants, mainly in the ocean, use light from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen, fixing the carbon in plants. Even though decay of these plants uses up some of this oxygen it's believed that over a very long period the oxygen gradually increased to its present levels at the expense of the CO2. But 600 milion years ago the earth's atmosphere must have contained a lot of carbon dioxide. The percentage by volume of CO2 could have been as high as 20 % because the 1:1 chemical ratio for O2/CO2 is also the volume ratio.

    Personally I think shifting taxes onto polluters isn't a bad thing. North Americans could tighten their belts a bit and easily have a 6% reduction.
    People love their SUVs and cheap electricity from coal.

    • Re:Canada will probably leave (Score:4, Informative)

      by Phronesis ( 175966 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @05:33PM (#5755207)
      The earth's atmosphere now contains 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1 % argon and much less than 1% carbon dioxide. If we were to burn all the coal, oil and trees on the earth it would almost hit 2%

      The earth's atmosphere contains 350 parts per million of CO2. That's a lot less than 1%. If CO2 really rose to 2%, this would be about a 60-fold increase, and would represent twice as much CO2 as the earth has ever seen.

      The concentration of CO2 never exceeded 1% in earth's history. Oxygen concentration started to increase and carbon dioxide to decrease about 2.75 billion years ago, and by 2 billion years ago, the concentrations were quite close to today's levels. You can find a nice account of this here [nau.edu]. See, in particular, the last slide, which shows a graph of CO2 and O2 concentrations over the last 4 billion years.

    • Personally I think shifting taxes onto polluters isn't a bad thing. North Americans could tighten their belts a bit and easily have a 6% reduction. People love their SUVs and cheap electricity from coal.

      Absolutely. I just don't understand this mentality "I want to keep my children safe, I'm concerned about their safety so I'm going to drive around this tank for a vehicle. Pollution? Me driving my one SUV isn't going to contribute that much. I mean look around.. everyone else is doing it.. oh..." People wa

      • well when electric starter/alternators become more commonplace in cars, perhaps you won't see so many people idling in their cars. of course, the auto industry will have to move to a new battery standard before the electric starter/alternator comes into mass use. yes hybrid cars already use them, but they have lots of battery power built in.
    • 4) Canada benefits more than other countries from global warming

      Canada doesn't benefit at all from global warming. I don't particularly want Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Victoria underwater (from icecap melting due to heat increases), which doesn't matter, because the temperature isn't likely to increase much anyway.

      If it does: we lose our most beautiful cities, and Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta get warmer. Like anyone cares. Hell, I lived there and I wouldn't care, it's a dry cold, i
    • "4) Canada benefits more than other countries from global warming"

      No, we don't. Because we are higher above the equator, we have the two worst extremes. In the winter, all the sunlight is at a very acute angle from the south, leading to intense cold. In the summer, all the sunlight is directly overhead, for many hours, with little to no angle to dillute it. This is how Saskatchewan can be -42 C in winter and +45 C in summer, beating temperature records in Texas for heat.

      Global warming doesn't help in
      • You are right there will/would be unforeseen problems.

        I was actually refering to the fact that Canada is an oil exporter. Alberta, NWT, and NF will lobby against it. The canadian economy benefits from people creating excess CO2.

        Also many people believe that a warmer canada isn't bad as they don't understand all the science behind it.
  • ... why are these industries out there? They feed our thirst for power (electrical that is) and things.

    I have changed houses 4 times in the last 7 years. You can't sell a home without an airconditioner. Increasingly homes come with a pool or an outdoor jacuzzi/spa. Two car garage is virtually mandatory. Surprise, surprise we had two power crises here in Ontario this past year. One was last summer and one was this winter. Nuclear power is a no-no. Hydro-electric likewise. Wind power hit a major NI

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