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Canada, US and Kyoto

Posted by michael on 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."

42 comments

  1. Hold up... by Justen · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't be down on Canada just yet.

    Canada signed 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.)

    1. Re:Hold up... by bofkentucky · · Score: 1, Insightful

      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.

      --
      09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
    2. Re:Hold up... by PD · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
    3. Re:Hold up... by leviramsey · · Score: 3, Funny

      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...

    4. Re:Hold up... by bofkentucky · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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 AM from heat stroke.

      Transmission loss has got to be killer, wind turbines are mostly out in uninhabitable areas right? Long transmission distance equals more losses for an already overtaxed system.

      --
      09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
    5. Re:Hold up... by PD · · Score: 1

      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 build more windmills.

      --
      If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
    6. Re:Hold up... by PD · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

      --
      If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
    7. Re:Hold up... by cpeterso · · Score: 1


      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.

      --
      cpeterso
    8. Re:Hold up... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The birds cannot even use a compass. They are retarded.

    9. Re:Hold up... by Christopher+Thomas · · Score: 1

      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 photovoltaic cells will be very cheap and cost very little in terms of pollution to make (the main complaint about thick cells). For large-scale generation, you'd use concentrating mirrors to heat a working fluid in pipes or in a resovoir, and draw power off of that the same way you'd draw it from any other power-plant-scale heat source. Aluminum mirrors are cheap and durable, especially when they don't have to be optics-grade.

      We'll see what actually happens in a few decades (when fabrication costs drop a bit more and when power storage via fuel cell gets cheap enough to install intermittent power systems like this more widely).

    10. Re:Hold up... by SN74S181 · · Score: 1

      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.

    11. Re:Hold up... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's also interesting that Canada has a history of not meeting the environmental commitments it makes -- what was that silly little International meeting before Kyoto? Gee, I can't remember, and neither does the Canadian Government. It's easy to make commitments you have NO actual intention of keeping. At the end of the day, there will be lots of weaseling, creative accounting, blame-shifting, and pollution will continue pretty much unabated. Mark my words.

    12. Re:Hold up... by cluckshot · · Score: 1

      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 Solar and Wind can produce simply massive amounts of electricity they don't do it when we want the energy. They do it when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing etc. They run counter intuitively to the very reason we use electricity. (Energy on Demand vs When it arrives) The addition of Solar and Wind energy to an electrical Grid unbalances it more and more causing massive throttling problems with the few devices we control. Nuclear by the way also has the same problems. The real issue in energy will be dealt with when we face up to what we are doing and adapt our designs and technology to the reality and not our imagined situation.

      --
      Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
    13. Re:Hold up... by Christopher+Thomas · · Score: 1

      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 an efficiency far lower than an electric motor. The only thing a fuel is good at producing is heat. Other forms of stored power are even worse.

      You would likely try to argue that this efficiency in use is made up for by inefficiencies in electricity generation. For fuel-burning power plants, this is probably true. It is not true for things like hydroelectric or wind power; mechanical to electrical conversion is very efficient. It is not true for solar or nuclear, as the "wasted" energy is energy that could not be captured by any other means.

      In short, your argument about efficiency appears to be based on incorrect assumptions.

      The real issue in energy will be dealt with when we face up to what we are doing and adapt our designs and technology to the reality and not our imagined situation.

      How?

      You need light when it's dark out, so using sunlight when it's being produced doesn't work.

      Most other cases of energy consumption occur far from the energy source, or similarly can't be used as they are produced.

      Situations where you want to turn power into heat already use fossil fuels, which appear to be your favourite energy source.

      How exactly would you set things up to use energy more efficiently?

    14. Re:Hold up... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Electricity expires in miliseconds and is most difficult to store. I am a researcher working on this issue and am looking deeply into the issues including supplies of energy and balancing loads etc.

      The facts are as I said. The thermal efficiency of an electrical motor is high with regards to the watts it receives but is very low when you consider that the thermal engine must be used to generate the energy.

      Here are approximate efficiencies:
      Chemical (or other)to Thermal for generation about 33% efficient.
      Transmission losses: 50% efficient.
      Electrical Motor Losses from the electrical energy about 90% efficient.
      The train here is multiplicative. So the 33% becomes about 17% and then about 15% by the time the electrical motor does the work.

      The storage in a Lead Acid cell is about 9% efficient against the input electrical energy. Thus you see to charge a battery and recover the energy from it causes 33% to 50% to 9% or about 2% of the total energy input gets to the wheel in an electical car. This is why they always flop in the market.

      Fuel Cells see the following
      33% thermal to electic
      80% electic to Hydrogen
      60% Hydrogen to axel drive.
      If you use a fuel reformer you get about 80% of chemical to Hydrogen.

      The issues here are complex but the view of electicity as easy to store or convert is incorrect.

      Having studied wind and water turbines a great deal.. All turbines and thermal energy devices have a natural limit against drive energy of just over 37% and we have not yet reached this in any device. Wind, Water and Solar as sources here represent conversion of what was essentially a useless resource into a useful one.

      In electrical generation Water is extremely able to be present when we want the energy. Solar and Wind are completely available when they are and not related to when we want to use them. They run counter to why we generate electricity. They generate severe load balancing and demand matching problems in an electrical generation net.

      The problems with storing energy and managing it are profoundly difficult. The US TVA built a Pumped Storage Facility at Raccoon Mt Tn, because Nuclear Plants chunk out power essentially at a flat rate. To match demand they had to soak up power and put it back out. The thermal efficiency here is about 9%. This problem of balancing supply to demand wastes over 1/2 of all electrical energy generated. The problem is not well discussed and as such most people are completely unaware of this problem.

      This gross inefficiency of electrical grids is why Gas Turbine small scale generators are gaining favor. They can respond much more quickly and save energy some.

      However: When you buy electricity only about 2% of the cost is fuel. The remainder is the infrastructure used to make it available or generate the electricity.

  2. Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You'd never been able to tell, living across from Detroit. The pollution coming across the river into Canada seems worse than ever.

  3. Depends what you measure... by Phronesis · · Score: 4, Informative
    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:

    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.

    1. Re:Depends what you measure... by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 3, Informative

      "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 years; the temperature we would have reached in 2094 would instead be delayed to 2100.

    2. Re:Depends what you measure... by Phronesis · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the correction.

    3. Re:Depends what you measure... by cluckshot · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
  4. We Stink! by jo42 · · Score: 1, Insightful
    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.

    1. Re:We Stink! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just pull the plug on them? You got to replace their energy production with something unless you want some very unhappy consumers.

  5. Pollution is not less with Kyoto by ManDude · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

  6. A little dated by SimJockey · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
    1. Re:A little dated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait for Martin? Those three words sum up essentially all of Canadian federal politics right now.

  7. Canada will probably leave by t482 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Canada will probably leave by Phronesis · · Score: 3, Informative
      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. See, in particular, the last slide, which shows a graph of CO2 and O2 concentrations over the last 4 billion years.

    2. Re:Canada will probably leave by rsax · · Score: 1
      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 want to insure their childrens', spouse's or their safety if they get into an accident but don't give a rat's ass about the air that they're polluting which will probably have detrimental effects on their health in the long run. Here in Ontario it's absurd the amount of smog alerts we have every summer which only seems to get worse annually. Despite all that, I see people idling in all types of vehicles. And to top that, I can't even count how many times I've seen people idling when they aren't even in the frickin cars!

    3. Re:Canada will probably leave by Sentry21 · · Score: 1

      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, it's entirely livable.

      If it doesn't: well, then what's the point? Damage the environment, for what? A little extra profit margin the easy way?

      If you're going to be/talk stupid or Albertan or whatever you are - and that's fine - please don't give away the fact that you're Canadian, you'll give us all a bad name. Most (halfway educated) Canadians don't want global warming under any circumstances.

      --Dan

    4. Re:Canada will probably leave by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I don't particularly want Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Victoria underwater
      Speak for yourself regarding Montreal; it would probably go a good way towards putting the secession issue to bed once and for all.
    5. Re:Canada will probably leave by sigep_ohio · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
    6. Re:Canada will probably leave by grub · · Score: 1


      No. Montreal has a huge percentage of English speakers. It was Montreal that swayed the results in the last referendum.

      --
      Trolling is a art,
  8. 'scuse me, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...I believe a couple of "neeners" are in order here.

  9. Re:Hold up... Something is wrong here. by ChiefPilot · · Score: 1

    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!

  10. Wrong about #4. by Inoshiro · · Score: 1

    "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 the slighest. All it does is ensure that wind storms and other weather anomalies become more frequent and potent.

    --
    --
    Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
    1. Re:Wrong about #4. by t482 · · Score: 1

      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.

  11. Re:Hold up... Something is wrong here. by sigep_ohio · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
  12. No problems. Think about it ... by fygment · · Score: 1

    ... 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 NIMBY even in the rural areas. So coal-fired it is.

    So our houses consume more electricity with every convenience added. Our vehicle ownings are on the increase. Our little luxuries we buy aplenty thus driving industry to increase capacity to supply us. Kyoto won't change that.

    Frankly, we have to change or accept. I for one have decided to accept. What used to be luxuries are now necessities. I will take a little pollution in exchange for the pampered and safe ride my van gives me. Will I pay for it with my life? Maybe, but know what? We're living longer than we ever have in the history of the human race. I'm not worried.

    --
    "Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
  13. Lines not a problem by bluGill · · Score: 1

    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 extracted from coal, but the entire line loss from my house to the generator is under 5% according to the coop.

    Niether is as good as a third utility that runs a nuculear plant just 5 miles from my house, but if you are going to run coal I'd prefer it being near the mines. (Interestingly enough most people who live nearyby complain about the smoke from the nuke plant and then point to the coal plant as proof of how bad it is)

    In conclusion: Nukeuclear plants are good neighbors, but transmission of power from point a to point b is not an issue.

    1. Re:Lines not a problem by bofkentucky · · Score: 1

      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 associations pitch a fit when they see an 18" sat dish go up on someones house, what are they going to say when you plant a 50' windmill mast in the backyard. Oh to get a rough estimate on the inefficency of those trains, a modern gas engine is only about 12-15% efficent, diesels run closer to 20% (and most locomotives are Diesel/Electric). Can't tell you what the inefficency of that electric final stage on the train is but you can get the drift.

      However, 20 train loads of coal produce hom many megawatts of power a day? My coop has 3 coal generator plants across east KY and they chew 8 million tons of coal/year for like 1.4 Gigawatts.

      --
      09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
  14. Re:Hold up... Something is wrong here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You hit the jackpot here! Somehow the real issues of efficiency never get discussed. If the whole world used energy at the efficiency of the USA we would see based on
    Use of 20% of the energy that we produce about 85% of the food, 60% of the mined goods and about 35% of its industrial output along with 90% of its timber. The world would be 4 to 5 times better off than it is now, if they did things our way as in the USA! and ... to boot they might see cleaner rivers and air.

    The whole logic of Kyoto was that economic development in the USA was inhibiting the development of the rest of the world and as such the solution was to "Hobble the USA." Well bluntly, "My Freedom and My Prosperity are not the problem, they are the solution!"